


Cap Should Have Just Gone With A Golden Retriever

by Luckybuckyboy (Whowantstoknow259)



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Light Angst, Light Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Natasha is secretly a nerd, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Possessive Behavior, See notes for explainations, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Steve's struggling with jealousy, The tags have changed, blink and you'd miss it natasharon, but not creepy, csa mention, gay characters talking and thinking about homophobia, it does not actually happen but hydra goons are disgusting and deserve what they ultimately get, like emotionally they're together but for most of the fic there's only sexual tension, medical torture mention, rebuilding relationships, religious characters talking about being gay, torture mention, werewolf!Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:05:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whowantstoknow259/pseuds/Luckybuckyboy
Summary: Steve had always seemed like the type of person who would want an easy going affectionate breed, like a lab or a friendly mutt.It just seemed out of character for him to have a giant black wolf-dog. Maybe full wolf, no dog, which, were those even allowed in the city? Then again who was gonna be the jackass who kicked out Captain America’s dog, full wolf or no.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted on my tumblr luckybuckyboy where I take prompts and will fangirl with you any day (I'd link it but I'm on mobile.)
> 
> I just needed more werewolf!Bucky.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cap went and got himself a dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.

Cap had gone and gotten himself a dog.

To be honest he had gone and gotten himself the last dog Clint ever expected. Steve had always seemed like the type of person who would want an easy going, affectionate breed, like a lab or a friendly mutt.

It just seemed out of character for him to have a giant black wolf-dog. Maybe full wolf, no dog, which, were those even allowed in the city? Then again who was gonna be the jackass who kicked out Captain America’s dog, full wolf or no?

The dog was absolutely massive, coming up to Cap’s waist and had a big barrel chest and a giant head. It also seemed to be bullying Cap, pressing against him and trying to herd him away from where Clint stood waiting with Natasha in the foyer of Steve’s apartment.

Cap seemed to be trying to reason with the animal, but it seemed like a losing battle because he didn’t seem willing to push the dog away; the dog was more that than willing to lean on Cap’s legs, growling and lightly snapping as Cap kept trying to pass.

“Come on,” Cap almost whined at the wolf-dog, “you can come with if you want.”

Clint didn’t necessarily subscribe to the whole theory of alpha-beta crap in either humans or dogs, you don’t need to dominate people to control them. But Cap left Captain America on the battlefield and Steve Rogers, unless provoked, was a gentle guy who, while smart as whip, was still a bit of a derp.

 

Which is why a friendly, more docile breed would have been a better fit for Cap, rather than a wolf-dog with strong personality and instincts that would bowl right over Cap's gentleness.

Hence the current situation where Cap was getting bullied by his own dog.

Cap looked up helplessly at Clint and Natasha, shrugging slightly.

“Steve,” Natasha said, looking slightly bemused, “why do you have a dog all of sudden? I thought we had travel plans.”

Which, yes now that Clint thought about it, the choice to get a dog now of all times was extremely odd considering. Cap had just gotten home two months ago from trying to track down his brainwashed ex-best friend and was gearing up to follow some more leads. 

Cap wasn't an impulsive dude when he wasn't fired up, and even then Clint doubted that he'd make any decisions that would interfere with him finding Barnes.

“Uh yes, actually that was what I wanted to talk to you about, um give me a second.”

He looked guiltily down at the wolf-dog and then gently grabbed it by the shoulders, physically pulling it back towards the hallway. Surprisingly, despite how aggressive the dog had been acting, it allowed itself to be pulled back to what Clint assumed was Cap's bedroom.

He stayed back there for a couple minutes, probably reassuring the wolf-dog. When he came back it was alone. 

“Right, can we just have lunch here? I'll order in from that fusion place you like.”

Natasha was frowning like Cap's behavior troubled her. Clint wasn't as close with Cap as he was with Natasha but he knew she was worried about him since the whole ‘your death was for nothing and your dead best friend was actually a POW for seventy years’ thing. He waited until she nodded before shrugging a relaxed grin at Cap and ambling towards the living room.

“Order a pizza while you're at it and you're on.” Clint said as he plopped down on the sofa. 

After ordering the food, Cap sat down and leaned forward with his arms on his knees. Clint was suddenly reminded of Cap in the briefing room. This wasn't Cap at home, the gentle derpy man who tried to be a good friend, this was the tactician, Captain America's game face. 

Clint worked hard to be underestimated, and worked hard to not see everything he did. But little things were adding up here and for the life of him Clint couldn't see a logical conclusion. He wasn't the only one, Natasha's subtle frown hadn't gone away since the appearance of the wolf-dog.

Not for the first time Clint wondered which was was the mask. The gentle giant who seemed at a loss in a fast paced world, or the sharp eyed soldier who could read a room or a battlefield in seconds and then act accordingly with scary accuracy. What really lay at the core of Steve Rogers besides patriotism and a pattern of reckless decisions that paid off in the end?

“I don't want to be just another person hunting and harassing Bucky. I've thought about this a lot, and the last six months has just proven that I'm not going to find him if he doesn't want to be found. I think my efforts will be better spent making it safe for him to come home and giving him a safe place to come home to.”

“This was not what you were saying when we came home two months ago,” Natasha said slowly, “we had to force you to stop. Sam and I have been the only things holding you back from driving yourself into the ground chasing a ghost. What’s changed?”

Cap frowned.

“I've just had some time to cool off. To think about more than what I want and what Bucky needs. I know I'm the only one in his corner unconditionally and I'm the best one suited to help him. I've got some plans and a team of lawyers who’s going to start help clearing his name.” He sighed, “You just gotta know when something is not working and try another approach.”

Now even Clint was frowning. But Natasha narrowed her eyes and then suddenly nodded coming to some conclusion. 

She engaged Cap in conversation about his plans. The food came just as Cap was talking about his research into lawyers and his light reading into the differences between military court, civilian court, and Senate or Congressional hearings. Aside from boring Clint to tears with the minutiae of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of trial, the rest of lunch went smoothly and Cap was smiling by the time he showed them out.

“Well that was weird,” Clint said the moment they hit the street. 

Natasha just gave a little sharp grin.

“Steve's not as slick as he thinks he is. I don't know where he is, but I guarantee that Barnes made contact. There's no other reason for Steve to suddenly give up the search and start acting like he's gonna be Barnes’ little housewife slash knight in shining armor.”

“His reasoning was sound, maybe he just decided to be smarter about it.”

“Barton, we have seen that man bullrush a brick wall. No, the reason he stopped looking is because what he was looking for found him first.”

-

It started with an abandoned puppy in the alleyway. He was black and big for a puppy but still had the sweet floppiness that all species of babies possess. Two older boys were hitting him with sticks and laughing at the small snarls that the creature made.

When Steve saw this, only five years old and a fresh orphan, he got so angry he tried to fight the boys with sticks only to get hit with them several times across the face for his trouble. But after they knocked him down they left and stopped bothering the puppy and so Steve considered it a success. 

He expected the dog to run away, but he didn't; he stayed and licked Steve's wounds. In return, Steve snuck him into his room at the children's home and fed him all the meat from his supper that night.

He named the puppy Bucky because Steve's favorite actor Buck Jones, the cowboy from the first and only film Steve had ever seen, and it tickled Steve to think his puppy would be a cow dog like Buck had. 

Steve had a room to himself because the other bed was currently empty, waiting for another boy to fill it. So hiding Bucky was easy. The first week sometimes he would disappear but always be there next time Steve left and then reentered the room. Steve had no idea how he was getting out but since Bucky always came back it wasn't that big of deal. 

After a month, Bucky disappeared and was gone for two whole days. Steve was beside himself with worry when Sister Grace led in a dark haired boy roughly Steve's own age. She introduced him as James Barnes and said he'd be Steve's new roommate. 

As soon as the Sister left James turned to Steve with a sly grin.

“Sorry if I made you worry Stevie, I thought they'd put me right in here when I turned up at the door but I guess I needed a caseworker and the police got involved. But I'm back now, and now we can really play because I'm not a secret anymore.”

It took Steve a second, but he was young and his mother had told him Irish myths for bedtime stories and so maybe he had a little easier time swallowing magic than he might have otherwise done. But he could see that James had hair the color of Bucky’s fur and eyes that were Bucky’s grey and wildness about him that seemed familiar.

“Bucky?” Steve asked, just to make sure.

The other boy responded by tackling Steve, somehow roughhousing while still being gentle with the smaller boy.

“You and me, Stevie, we’re gonna have fun.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Domesticity and a visit from the lawyer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.

Steve waited until Clint and Natasha left before going to his bedroom to check on Bucky.

He was on the bed and gave Steve a judgmental look when Steve opened the door. 

Bucky had turned up on Steve's morning run a week ago and had easily followed him home. The metal arm was missing, so Bucky only had three legs but he not only kept up but had snapped at Steve's heels when he had tried to slow down. 

Since then Bucky hadn't shifted from wolf form and had hardly let Steve out of his sight. 

It wasn't so bad even if Bucky couldn't talk, Steve had never differentiated much between the two sides of Bucky, the wolf was just a part of his best friend that he loved like the rest of him. Even if Bucky never let him see the human side of him again, it would be enough to be near him, to be able to see his Bucky again after so long without.

Besides, just because he couldn't speak didn't mean that Bucky couldn't communicate; wolf Bucky had always relied on body language and nonverbal cues to tell Steve exactly how he felt.

They were currently in the middle of an argument; Steve attempting to ask for Bucky’s permission to take certain steps on his behalf and Bucky making it clear that the request was denied. 

Apparently coming back from the dead was not a cure for stubbornness for either one of them. 

Bucky was on board with Steve buying some property and a house upstate where there'd be privacy and room for Bucky if he wanted to stay in wolf form. But he was adamantly against the lawyer and clearing his name. 

He had tried to break Steve's phone when Steve had called to set up the preliminary interview. Then he'd refused to be in the same room as Steve but had also refused to let Steve out of his sight for long and so had spent a lot of time lurking in doorways and snarling if Steve attempted to close a door. He had obviously given that up when Steve had attempted to go out with his friends.

Steve was torn, on one hand the most important thing to him in the world was never letting another person control or make decisions for Bucky against his will. On the other what Bucky wanted would directly interfere with that. Without any political protection or declaration of innocence Bucky was a target. 

His entire life Bucky had protected and cared for him, sometimes directly disregarding Steve when he said he didn't want or need it. Generally Steve had let him, even if he did complain, because even if Steve was just human, he was Bucky’s pack and Bucky was his. This was finally Steve's chance to make it up to Bucky, to protect him, to make amends for the way he'd failed Bucky, failed their little pack. And it was killing him that Bucky was refusing to let him.

Now Bucky was giving him sulky glares while following him from the bedroom. He'd no doubt heard Steve tell Natasha about the plans for the lawyer and he already knew that Steve hadn't canceled the appointment for tomorrow.

“Bucky, Buck, please just listen to what she has to say. You don't have to make any decisions or do anything official, you just have to sit there all furry and listen to us explore options.”

Bucky snapped at Steve's legs as if he was going to bite them, but ultimately doing nothing but tugging on the fabric of his sweats. Not that was Steve was scared, hell Bucky could have his jaws around Steve's neck and Steve wouldn't be scared of him, his body just did not know how to fear Bucky. Even on the helicarrier when he'd been in the sights of Bucky's gun Steve hadn't been scared and had been proven right when Bucky had thrown down his weapon and run rather than hurt Steve. 

When you were part of a wolf pack, even if you were only human, a certain part of you would always rely on instincts and Steve just did not have the instincts to fear Bucky.

Steve said as much as he pulled out Bucky’s lunch, several lamb cuts that Steve had specifically ordered fresh from a high end butcher. He'd have to set up a recurring order with a variety for Bucky once they found a place upstate.

Steve was suddenly struck by the dizzying thought that everything was backwards and upside down. Steve was fighting Bucky for him to let him take care of him and how back in the day Bucky had spent almost all his time in human form, simply because it was easier to feed a human digestive system that could eat the cheap rice, flour, and beans that made food go farther. There was a panic settling in his stomach that he hadn't felt since seeing Brooklyn the first time after waking from the ice.

Steve was brought sharply back to the present with Bucky lightly digging his teeth into the back of his thigh. Sharp enough to sting but too soft to break the skin. For a second he couldn't speak as his best friend looked up and met his eyes, and then he was able to swallow the lump in throat and return to unwrapping the lamb. 

“Chew on me all you want, pal,” Steve said as he put the plate down where Bucky could eat it easily, “still never gonna be scared of you.”

-

Bucky had always been more soft furry friend that dangerous animal to Steve. As children, the wolf's bulk had seemed puppy-ish and sweetly awkward. Very few outsiders had seen Bucky as a wolf playing with Steve but when they had Steve had always been a bit bemused when they gasped in fear for the little boy play wrestling with the wolf.

When they became teenagers Bucky spent most of his time human mainly because they had discovered a new and better way to have fun together in private. Shifting took energy and the wolf required more protein than the human. Sometimes when it was exceptionally cold Bucky would shift so that his fur and higher body heat could keep Steve warm at night. So Steve was mostly used to Bucky looking human, and hadn't really seen him properly when he was shifted for a while.

Which was why when a vicious snarl interrupted three large dock workers kicking Steve's ass, Steve wondered if he should be afraid. Bucky's bulk at the mouth of the alley seemed so large and menacing without the softening context or air of domesticity of their tiny boarding house room. But even as Bucky took a chunk out of one of the men as he ran them off, the brief thought struck Steve as completely absurd.

Even if Bucky was big and dangerous, even if he was a wild creature half the time, Bucky would never be dangerous to Steve.

-

Steve woke up with a face full of fur and found himself snuggled up to Bucky. For one second he was so overjoyed to wake up like old times that he tightened the arm he had thrown around Bucky in his sleep before he could control himself and let go.

When he’d first being brought out of the ice, a S.H.I.E.L.D. therapist had asked him if he had trouble telling the two centuries apart, and until Bucky had come back it had never been a problem. It had hurt too much to look back and this new century was too strange to mistaken as the old one.

It still hurt Steve to look back at his past but in the same way it hurt to chew on your lip, it was a satisfying, distracting, sort of hurt, the small kind pain that it felt good to lean into. Which is why it took him twenty minutes to move away from Bucky and start his morning routine. Steve found it easy to spend the morning curled with Bucky daydreaming about memories and about making new memories, specifically this morning he’d been daydreaming about kissing Bucky.

Before he’d come back, it had been both five and seventy something years since they had woken up together. They had been curled up in their pup tent Bucky had given him a small kiss before crawling out to take his watch. For a long time that had been the last morning and the last kiss that Steve would ever get from Bucky. He'd replay it in his head, it hadn't been that special both of them in their clothes and mentally preparing themselves for the upcoming mission but it had been a small bubble of warmth in a frozen warzone.

And the kiss. Well. That kiss had been last bit of action Steve had gotten in five years.

Steve really should just be content that he got to wake up wrapped around Bucky again and leave it at that. But he couldn't help but feel that he'd give a lot just to have another perfunctory and chaste kiss good morning. 

But he'd take Bucky anyway he could get him and be grateful.

Steve put down some food for Bucky and they ate their pre-run meal in comfortable silence. Steve had worked out once before eating and his blood sugar had dropped so dangerously low that he'd felt drunk. Now he was careful to load up on carbs before he ran.

Bucky insisted on going with him every morning, and Steve had almost let that convince him to stay home but ultimately decided just to let Bucky run with him. He needed his morning run, not just for the endorphins that he got afterwards but because he always woke up with such an abundance of energy every morning. If he didn't exercise he'd be jittery and clumsy all day and unable to fall asleep that evening. Running ten to fifteen miles took the edge off things.

The day went smoothly, Bucky didn't act too irritated with him and Steve felt the small bubble of hope rising in his chest as he buzzed up the lawyer.

The firm had not only been the best money could buy but Steve had done his research, and between them the partners had a combination of backgrounds that would help a case as complex as Bucky's. 

The lawyer introduced herself as Jillian Sperling, she had an assistant with her and both of them seemed to be a bit awed by Captain America but kept up a professional veneer that Steve appreciated. They both sent nervous glances to where Bucky was lurking in the corner but said nothing.

“Captain Rogers, I must admit I was not surprised that you asked for me specifically. As an expert in military and civil rights law I think it's very smart of you to contact a lawyer after the whole Shield situation. It's been six months so we will be playing catch up but better late than never.”

Steve blinked, he hadn't even considered getting a lawyer for himself. For a second some people had made some noise about liability but then it had all been blamed on S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Nazi’s in their ranks. 

“...Um no,” he started before clearing his throat, “I mean I guess I also should have some questions for you about that but that isn't why I set up this appointment.”

He tapped the thick file on the coffee table in front of him.

“Do you remember the man I fought in DC? I know the news coverage of that incident got lost in the revelation about Hydra members in our government, but did you catch any of the coverage of that fight?”

Jillian blinked and frowned, clearly confused.

“Uh, yes, I did see mention of that fight. I did some research on you after you made the appointment and saw some of the footage.”

“Okay, well this may sound far fetched but I need you to know that it's true. That man was Bucky, James Barnes.”

“What?” Jillian stared at him like the whole conversation was a non sequitur. 

“My best friend and my sniper from the Commandos. We thought he died on the train in the Alps but he didn't.”

To her credit Jillian recovered quickly.

“Alright, I have several questions but I think the most pertinent is why am I here Captain Rogers?”

“Bucky was being held by Hydra, he's been a prisoner of war for seventy years,” Steve handed the folder to Jillian, “but he's free now. I need you to help me keep him free.”

As Steve explained the situation and Jillian looked through the file her expression alternated between horror and a gleam that Steve recognized as someone who enjoyed taking in the impossible. She agreed to the case, asked him for copies of all the information Steve had on both the Winter Soldier and Bucky, and to give her two weeks to go over the information with a team and then they could start talking strategy. She also said she would see if Steve himself needed to be protected from legal action. 

“Once last thing,” Jillian said as they were wrapping up, “Barnes, am I going to have any access to him or is this being done in absentia?”

Steve did not look at Bucky's corner.

“This is all planning right now, until I have Bucky's permission we won't be taking it farther than preparing a case. But I can't guarantee that he'll talk to you or want to show himself even if I get his permission.”

“Are you in contact with him currently?”

Steve hesitated, in his corner Bucky gave a soft whine.

“No, I'm not. But I want to make it safe for him to come home. He deserves to come home.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some Bucky pov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end of chapter for warnings.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.

It’s when he's scared in the back of a car, there's strange men and the whole pack is gone.

So he bit one of the strange men, harder than he's ever bitten anyone before and he runs and everything is big and loud and smells strange and he's only small.

There are boys in the alley, only a little older than he is and they've got sticks and they start hitting him with the sticks and no one had ever treated him with cruelty before and he didn't know what to do.

And then there he was. Small and scrawny and so, so brave. The bigger boys pushed him down but then they left. And James was confronted with someone even smaller than he was and even though he didn’t smell like pack (not yet) he smelled safe and good.

James didn't think that he'd mind being called Bucky, not if it's Steve calling him that.

-

It’s when Steve catches him in the act. Barreling into his room already launching into a tirade about some injustice. Bucky was surprised, annoyed at being interrupted, and suddenly a little hotter because he had been thinking about how bones and wiry muscles felt under skin and now Steve was right in front of him.

“Bucky!” Steve gasped, slowly turning bright red.

He was wide eyed and wouldn't stop staring at where Bucky's hands were below his waist. 

“Stevie.” Bucky's voice was shockingly low, almost a growl, he felt a surge of something hot and dark with Steve eyes on him.

And then, to his eternal embarrassment, even though he'd stopped moving his hand when Steve opened the door, Bucky came. All it had taken was Steve looking at him.

Steve turned around and walked right back out of the room. Bucky wasn't worried, he'd seen the look on Steve's face.

They were teenage boys sharing a room through puberty but they'd never walked in on each other because typically both of them did it in the water closet. The nuns checked the dirty sheets before they were put in the laundry, to discourage self-abuse. Bucky always insisted Steve go first because he was a teenage boy and going after him meant that he could jerk it to Steve’s smell getting him so hot and making him feel like a fucking pervert at the same time. But sometimes Bucky had to come back to their room and either take care of himself or calm down. Sister Agnes taught them that self control was a virtue and Bucky did try to be good, but he was a teenage boy and when Steve would stick out his jaw and narrow his eyes in defiance of the world, well. 

It did things for him like nothing else.

Steve was bright red the whole time he was getting ready for bed but still slid into the same bed as Bucky. He'd held himself as stiff as a board until Bucky had gotten annoyed and reeled him in to sleep tangled up in each other as always. Then Bucky’d felt why Steve was so tense and had grinned against the other boy’s neck and that had been that.

All kinds of new fun just for the two of them.

-

It’s when Bucky came home. He's aching and tired and as always too hungry after a double but damn if unlocking the door to their little room isn't the best thing he'd ever done.

Bucky’d lived there for six months, moving as soon as he'd found work even before his eighteenth birthday, but Steve had only moved in about two weeks ago. It was starting to smell like the two of them and that makes his wolf feel deeply settled. 

It’s late but Steve was still up, sitting at the little desk working on homework. 

When Bucky had been approaching eighteen and had to think about what he was going to after he left the boy’s home, Steve had insisted on following. So Bucky had made a deal with both Steve and the Sisters that Steve would wait until he turned sixteen to move out and after moving out would continue to attend the parochial school until graduation. The Sisters agreed, mainly because it freed up twice as much space and they had a soft spot for little Steve. They saw his devotion to Bucky and vice versa as brotherly.

Well most of the Sisters, Sister Rose had gotten them into Mrs. Murphy’s boarding house and Bucky would discover it was an open secret that there had never been a Mr. Murphy and that Mrs. Murphy’s cousin Mrs. McCafferty with whom she ran the house was not actually her cousin.

It was a good deal, both Steve and the room, no matter the reason it was given, and Steve even accepted it as the price for living with Bucky even if he griped about being allowed to contribute. It allowed Steve to eat twice a day, once at the school lunch, and once at dinner that was included in their weekly rent. Sister Rose even gave Steve an extra slice of bread during lunch. He always gave it to Bucky for his lunch the next day along with some saved meat from his dinner because as he insisted he was eating twice a day five days a week so he could afford to even it out. Bucky felt like he should protest more, but he was always hungry and the meager lunch took the edge off. 

The work at the docks was hard but not as hard as it could have been. Bucky was stronger than most men without even trying and being in the open air didn't mess with his nose the way the metal and soot tinged air did around the factories. It paid three dollars a week and after their two dollar a week rent, it allowed him to put away a dollar a week. 

Having spare money was nice, on payday every week he brought home a handful of penny candy for him and Stevie to share. He could take Steve out to the nickle pictures and even buy him a popcorn occasionally. But most importantly, he had enough to buy Steve his medicine when he got sick and to have a safety net to pay rent with if something were to happen. 

It felt nice, if a bit stressful taking care of the two of them. But it was so wonderful to be living with Steve again after six months that Bucky didn't even care. 

“Hey Buck,” Steve said, looking up from his work and smiling, “Mrs. Murphy let me wrap a plate for you since you were working late.”

He moved his book to the bed so Bucky could sit at the desk and eat. The food was cold and slightly soggy, but filling. While Bucky ate Steve worked on his schoolwork and chattered about stuff that had happened at school.

After Bucky finished he got ready for bed at the small washbasin and went to use the lavatory at the end of the hall. When he got back Steve was just wearing his shorts and was washing his face. He turned to smile at Bucky and it was overwhelming.

He couldn't help but scoop Stevie up and spin him around, ignoring the indignant grunt and awkward way his fella squirmed. Steve hated reminders that he was small almost as much as he loved reminders that Bucky was bigger than him. Sometimes in bed he'd get this most adorable look of consternation like he felt like he should get angry on principle but was too turned on to do so.

After getting elbowed in the ribs Bucky put Steve down on the bed. 

“Whatcha do that for Bucky? You can't just manhandle me whenever you want.” Steve crawled under the covers while Bucky turned off the light but lay on his side to give Bucky the cold shoulder.

“I was just happy you're here is all. I saw you almost everyday but I missed living in the same room and sleeping in the same bed as you something fierce.”

“Well I was going to suck you off but now I'm not. I don't like it when you just pick me up with no warning.”

“I'm sorry Stevie-doll. Would it make you feel better if I sucked you? Would that help you forgive me?”

Steve huffed but rolled back onto his back and Bucky felt him pull down his shorts.

“Oh I s’pose.” 

Bucky couldn't suppress his grin as he slid down in the bed.

.

It's when he smelt Steve and panicked right there on the metal table. He had never hallucinated scent before. Then he was right there, his spindly little guy almost unrecognizable except for his face and the way he smelt of home and always, even now, just a little bit of Bucky. 

Escaping the factory almost happened in a daze. They confronted his torturer and the man with a skull for a face and Steve made the ridiculous suggestion that Bucky leave without him and then took years off of Bucky's life by making a leap through flames. It was all very surreal and it was almost the least of his worries that Steve was now twice his normal size.

At least it was until later on when Steve avoided his questions and Bucky started to think about how his Steve came to be twice his size and charging all alone in a warzone in Italy. 

Bucky had to run from camp because for the first time he felt the uncontrollable urge to shift out of sheer rage. He thought about the evil man who had stuck needles into him and had talked about how he was going to make him into something that was more than human before he’d discovered that Bucky already was. He wanted to get his hands on the men who’d done that to his Stevie, to get his mouth around their throats, to taste their blood. If what happened to Steve was anything like what happened to him, he’d never stop hunting the men responsible down until he’d tore every last one of them to shreds.

Steve followed him and stood at the edge of the clearing where Bucky stood panting and growling and completely unable to control himself. Steve was wringing his hands like he always did when he thought was in trouble. The familiar gesture soothed Bucky, it’d been so long since he’d seen his fella, but it still took several more minutes before he trusted himself to approach Steve.

Steve who was so tall now that Bucky only came up his waist, not his chest like before. Who had been so small and was Bucky's to protect. 

He dropped to his knees to let Bucky smell him, to let him scent his neck. Because he was still his Steve and still knew him inside and out.

Up close he can smell the roiling emotions, love, sweet relief, anger, pride, and touches of fear both bone deep and days old as well as fresh and nervous. The fear sharpened as Bucky pulled back to look at him again.

“It’s safe Buck, I came for you as soon as I found out.” Steve’s voice was harsh, as if he was trying to keep from crying. Bucky could smell bitter hatred on Steve’s scent. “I’ll never let them touch you again.”

Steve reeled him back in, winding his fingers through Bucky’s fur as if something was trying to rip them apart. He was mumbling that he’d got Bucky back, that no one would hurt him again. Steve’s arms were wrapped so tightly around Bucky to the point where he felt his bones ache at the pressure. 

He shuddered as something released inside of him. He was still incandescent with rage at the thought of his Stevie being an experiment for the same government that Bucky might have to give his life for, but there was also something in him that was calming. A fear that had had him on edge since he’d touched down on the continent, that had sharpened and deepened with every bomb and every bullet Bucky had shot until he’d been placed on that table. The fear and the anger had been the only things he had, until he didn’t even know he’d been feeling them. 

Now safe in Steve’s arms, where he could protect Steve and be protected by Steve, with Steve’s scent in his nose and on his tongue, he could feel that fear release as his instincts told him he was safer than he been in long time. 

He pulled back after a minute, Steve releasing him as soon as he did, and wasn’t that a weird thought, Steve being stronger than him. He shifted and felt even calmer, calm enough to take a long appraising look.

Bucky liked short skinny blond boys that could be meaner than spit, but he could see the appeal of Steve’s wide shoulders and narrow waist. 

While he was looking, his anger must have been apparent on his face because Steve began to fidget, his hands clenching and unclenching, like he’d much rather go back to clinging to Bucky than to have the conversation face to face about his sudden growth spurt. Which Bucky understood, their most intimate conversations were usually in the dark, curled around each other at night but face to face would make it harder for Steve to lie to him about who he needed track down and rip to shreds. 

“It's not so bad Buck,” Steve voice wavered and that confused Bucky for a second, “I know I look different but I'm still me and I'm never gonna be sick again.”

A familiar trait. Only Bucky's fella could go through torture, come out like an Adonis and be concerned about Bucky still wanting him. It would be almost laughable, if it didn't piss Bucky off so much. Since the first time they got their hands down each other's pants, Steve had always thought he should be more for Bucky. Always thinking Bucky’d want him more if he were stronger, taller, more handsome, as if Bucky wasn't already panting and pawing after him every chance he got. And now that Steve was all of those things, now was the time he started to believe that his scrawny little ass was the hottest fucking thing to Bucky. 

As if the main fact wasn't anything more than it belonged to Steve and Steve got him hot.

It made Bucky want to kill everyone who had ever been cruel or even less than kind to Steve when Steve started in on his imagined inadequacies. And now Bucky was going to have to start in with a whole new body.

Bucky cupped Steve’s face, pulling him a bit closer.

“Just tell me the truth, did you agreed to it, I mean really agree Stevie? Did you know what you were getting into.”

“Yes, Buck,” Steve looked unwaveringly into Bucky’s eyes, “I wish you could have met Dr. Erskine. He was a good man, maybe the best man I've ever met, and he saw me. He believed in me, like no one ever has.”

“Hey, punk--”

“Hush, ya jerk, you know you're not no one. He saw me the way that maybe only you see me. I believed in what he was trying to do.”

Bucky moved to pull Steve close, wrapping his arms around those giant shoulders. Jesus Christ, there was so much more of him now.

“Well maybe I'll get a chance to meet this Erskine, and maybe by then I'll be over the heart attack you gave me enough to thank him.” Bucky rubbed his hands up Steve's big new biceps.

“He was shot right after the procedure, he died in my arms.” Steve buried his face in Bucky's neck again.

Bucky almost burst into tears, his heart squeezing, the table and death, everything he had been trying to protect his guy from. It had still found him anyway.

“Oh Stevie no, I'm here now.” He ran his hand up and down Steve's back.

His guy shuddered and started crying, if Bucky was the betting type he'd guess that Steve hadn't cried since the last time he was in Bucky’s arms.

“They said you were dead. They were going to send me a letter saying you were dead!” Steve sobbed.

Bucky couldn't suppress the shiver. He was not exactly pleased that Steve was in a warzone, maybe he was the worst kind of selfish, but he couldn't be sorry he was off that table and back with Steve. 

“I'm not dead. You saved me Stevie-doll, I'm right here with you.”

Steve cried for another ten minutes before he slowly shuddered and sighed to a stop. Just breathing gently in Bucky's tight embrace.

“Tell me one more thing.” Bucky asked, keeping his voice gentle and sweet as he stroked Steve's hair.

Steve just sighed and made a questioning sound.

“How long after I left did you wait to sign up to be a human experiment?” Bucky made his voice turn dangerously sweet.

The ways Steve jerked back with a hunted look and started stammering about how he could explain was so typical that Bucky couldn't help but laugh. Being with his fella was already healing parts of him that he had thought were cold a broken.

Maybe he’d make it to the other side of this godawful war.

-

It was when they showed him the paper (that confirmed what he had been feeling in the pit of his stomach all along) that he finally allowed them to break him.

-

It was when his muzzle came off and he got a lung full of unfiltered air. Some dormant part of him surged forward with one thought MINE.

“Bucky?” Captain America asked, he looked gutted at the sight of the soldier without his mask.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” The soldier growled, even as he dropped his guns.

He did not want to fight this man, he wanted---he needed--

A flash of red was all the warning he got before the Widow leveled the grenade launcher and fired. It was all the warning he needed. He ducked for cover and then the Captain and his allies were being captured and for a crazy moment he wanted to kneel right next to him on the pavement as if his place was at the Captain’s shoulder. But there was too many agents and ultimately he knew where they were taking them so he returned to base.

.

“...but..I knew him…”

.

It was when the wind shifted that the entire helicarrier operation went to hell.

He dropped his gun and couldn't harm a single hair on the head of the blond man who smelled like the only good thing. 

MINE something in him snarled and it felt like all the loose pieces in the soldier rattled about and while the man completed his mission, the soldier fled. 

People are going to die Buck, as if they hadn't already.

.

Later when he put together the pieces he'd realized that the Soviet habit of destroying all paper trails did him a favor. 

Zola hadn't realized what he had had on his table but wolves were not unfamiliar to Department X. Their human forms were fast and strong and hard to kill even without any serum, but the drawback was the wolf was extremely resistant to any type of control. It was discovered that pressure on the Brachial nerves prevented shifting, the neuroscience behind it, if it still existed on paper was probably an insanely classified Russian state secret. 

The muzzle kept scents from triggering memories, and the arm kept him from shifting. And some Soviet lackey kept the American branch of Hydra from knowing that they were more than part of the aesthetic.

They sent him after Steve on the helicarrier without the lost muzzle because they thought fighting his best friend would distract Captain America long enough for him to fail. They hadn't understood what had happened on the bridge. Even more laughable was the fact that they'd been discussing removing his arm to study it in between missions when they took him out of cryo. They'd talked about it right there in front him after they pulled him out of the ice, practically told him how to remove it.

Immediately after he'd fled the helicarrier he'd been a creature of instinct, empty except for the urges guiding him. The strongest one, but also the most conflicted, was to return to the man from the helicarrier. The conflicting emotions confused him so he instead focused on getting somewhere safe and then removing the hateful arm. 

Then he had shifted.

It was like straightening a muscle he hadn't even known was cramped, except maybe a thousand times worse. Seventy years without shifting, if he counted his time in cryo. 

Shifting between forms always helped him heal faster. He started to remember. 

Even though he was sure Steve would kick him away, he wasn't scared Steve would turn him in, even in Bucky's worst fears Steve wouldn't betray him. But he knew there was no way that Steve would let him near, even as his instincts screamed that he could no longer stay away, that he needed to be able to see his Steve.

He’d been prepared to watch Steve from a distance, to stay as near as possible even if he could not be as close as he’d like but Steve had not kicked him away. He had instead welcomed him with open arms. Had let him near, which was good, the best even. It was good that he was here because there was a lot he had forgotten.

Most importantly he'd forgotten that Steve was an idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the underage warning: their relationship starts when they are teenagers, Bucky is older and therefore turns 18 before Steve thus the underage warning. I personally don't believe there are concerning power dynamics aside from their codependency but it's there so I'm gonna tag it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse at Steve's friendships and some plot happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I started this chapter like 3 times because first I lost my plot sheet, then because Steve's voice was just not speaking to me. Steve came this close to having a therapist and being really really good at selfcare and understanding his own emotions, but I found my plot sheet and remembered what I wanted for this chapter.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.

Sam had been the first person Steve told that he was calling off the search for Bucky. Despite being the only one of his friends and former colleagues to not attempt to talk him out of it, he’d been the one that Steve had tried hardest to convince. It was entirely because of Sam’s job. Sam did not try to be Steve’s therapist or use his job training in any of their conversations except for the fact that he was incredibly emotionally intuitive and insightful. Still, for months Steve felt like he had to hide the more dysfunctional aspects of himself for fear that Sam would ask him to “get help”. 

Sam wasn’t like his teammates turned friends, or form colleagues. While they were all perceptive enough to read changes in Steve’s emotional landscape, they were as, or more, dysfunctional in the same ways he was and so did not seem inclined to address it. Odd sleeping patterns, eating patterns, and an overall oppressive feeling of guilt would not strike them as unusual and Steve was often worried that it would stand out to Sam. He was concerned that his issues with PTSD, and he was only barely able to admit that he had it, and was reluctant to seek help for it, would damage his friendship with Sam. A friendship he really valued. The first friendship he’d made outside of his work since before the war. 

But as he got to know Sam better, he began to recognise in him the same broken parts that seemed to be in everyone who has seen battle. As their friendship deepened, Steve learned that receiving and giving support as a friend did not have to come with judgement. Even if he was slightly more twitchy about being deceptive towards Sam than his other friends. It wasn’t that he valued his friendship with Sam more than he did his with Natasha, the two he considered his best friends in the twenty first century, but Sam’s friendship had a different emotional weight and a seeming fragility that made lies between them more uncomfortable.

During the months that Steve had been searching for Bucky, he and Sam had developed a habit of calling each other when they couldn’t sleep. Occasionally Sam had been with him on the road, but that was more of an on call backup basis, staying in DC. But no matter what timezone it was, they answered the call if they could. They had spent many a long night talking about fallen wingmen. 

So Sam's phone call pulling him out of a dead sleep at two in the morning was not unprecedented or unwelcome. 

That didn't stop Steve from being ungraciously irritated as he wrapped the arm under Bucky tighter and answered the call with his other hand.

“‘lo?”

There was a pause on the other end.

“So Natasha told me that the revenge road trip slash Bucky Barnes manhunt had been postponed indefinitely.”

“Erm...Yes? I told you that already Sam..”

“Yes, but you didn't tell me that you also got a dog, and that you're moving to the country.” Sam’s voice was slightly high pitched in the way it was when he was calling Steve to ask for a distraction.

Bucky wriggled around in Steve's grip until he was laying on his stomach, head turned towards Steve so they were practically staring into each other's eyes, his ears flicked forward unashamedly eavesdropping.

“Um. Okay Sam, I got a dog. Also I'm looking at property upstate.”

“Steve you hate dogs and the last time we left the city I distinctly remember Captain Whine-merica telling me that the worst part of WWII was the camping.”

Bucky gave a soft chuff and Steve saw his eyes light up like they did when he was human and was laughing.

“Okay first of all, I have never said I hated dogs and--”

“Literally two weeks ago you said to me that you didn't understand the point of them and that they were stupid. It's not the first time you've mentioned it to me and I've known you for maybe eight months Rogers.”

“Well they kinda are and I don't understand why they're called man's best friend when--”

“Nope, we've had this argument before and until I understand what exactly you are comparing dogs to that makes them a disappointment in your eyes, I'm never going to see your side.”

“Well I don't hate dogs.”

“Yeah okay, anyways, whatever. What’s the dog’s name anyways?” 

“Erm, don’t laugh but--”

“Oh god did you name it Bucky, or some derivative of your boy’s name?”

“No, um, I didn’t give him a name. I wanted to let Bucky name him.”

“Dude, Steve,” Sam’s voice took on the distant quality it did when he was trying find a way to say something difficult for Steve to hear, “You’re pinning all your hopes on him coming back and I can hear you planning on how things will be the same as they were before, but I’m worried you’re going to be disappointed. A man doesn’t just come out the other side and just be okay to pick right up with fooling around and playing house--”

“--Sam--”

“I’m worried for you Steve.”

“No Sam, listen to me. I never, we never,” it was hard doing this with Bucky’s unblinking grey eyes on him, the unacknowledged third party in the conversation, “had the words for us the way that people now do. I called him my fella and my best friend but Sam, you gotta understand something. If he or I had been a woman, if it had been legal, we’d have been married for ten years already by the time the war started. I told you I lived with him my whole life, and I mean my whole life, the longest we were separated before the years I thought he was dead was when he was first shipped out and that was the hardest six months of my life. We’re soulmates Sam and I’m not expecting things to just be the same but I know in my bones that he and me, we’re not meant to be apart.

Steve looked right in Bucky’s eyes.

“Even if he never said a word to me or it was never like that again, just being near him would be enough.”

There was a pause on the other end while Sam digested that. Steve felt trapped by Bucky’s gaze, unable to blink or look away until Sam spoke, breaking up the heavy atmosphere.

“Jesus, has anyone ever told you that you’re a drama queen? I was just gonna warn you to take things slow but you’re all ready to fall on your sword and never hear your beloved speak again like some kind of fairytale romance. Tell me, in your head is Bucky the little mermaid to your Prince Eric?”

“If anyone’s gonna be a mermaid I want it to be me!” Steve exclaimed even as Bucky gave another chuff and a wolfish grin.

“Steve, that’s gay.” 

Steve laughed, he still got a little rush of reckless excitement when people knew and acknowledged the fact that he was gay. 

“Tell me a happy story before I go try and fall asleep again Steve.”

Steve launched into a story about his high school graduation party where Mrs. Murphy had cooked a feast and a whole chocolate cake, which was Steve’s favorite. He told Sam how all the other residents, mostly older queer folk, had joined and there had been dancing. Steve had danced once with Bucky before sitting the rest out because dancing had always been Bucky’s favorite thing to do and Bucky had danced with almost everyone including Sister Rose when she had stopped by. The day had ended with a chocolate flavored kiss right there in front of everyone and no one had said one thing.

He wrapped up the story with how he’d made himself sick with chocolate cake because Mrs. Murphy had said that the only person he was allowed to share with was Bucky and Bucky didn’t like chocolate because it made his stomach hurt. 

He left out that he’d confessed once to Bucky when he was very drunk that chocolate had become his favorite because never had to share it and then had promptly burst into tears and apologized for being selfish. Bucky had laughed at him and confessed that black licorice was Bucky’s favorite for the exact same reason.

“Steve,” Sam said quietly, when Steve had wound the story up, “Natasha says he’s been in communication with you, do you really think he’ll come home?”

“Yeah Sam, I do.”

“I was going to ask him to marry me,” the non-sequitur didn’t throw Steve off because he knew what dreams woke Sam up in the middle of the night, “I was going to, and it feels awful to say this, but do you know how lucky you are?”

“Yeah Sam, I really do.”

“Okay I’m gonna try and get some more sleep. Thank you Steve, you’re a good friend.”

“Goodnight Sam.”

Bucky shuffled closer and Steve wrapped his arm around him and pulled him in until he could bury his face in Bucky’s furry shoulder and hide from the guilt that he couldn’t help but feel.

-

Twenty minutes after Natasha and Clint had left a week and a day ago, Steve had gotten a text from Natasha with the name of a discreet realtor, Cora Morales, or Ms. Morales as she introduced herself. Because Natasha was Natasha and really, honestly, could probably not help herself, Ms. Morales had been expecting Steve’s call. Four days after that initial phone call he and Bucky had toured five properties that she had ready immediately with the promise of seven more that were farther north or ten more that were farther south. She promised that as soon as they found the property Steve could move in within the week.

Steve had only ever made one large purchase and that was his motorcycle. He didn’t know if all real estate purchases went that fast or if it was just a perk of being rich enough to afford a realtor like Ms. Morales.

The first four properties were all high end, with either modern or classic style mansions that made Steve uncomfortable with their obvious wealth. The final property was prefaced by Ms. Morales saying that she'd only included it because Steve had said he wanted a lot of land,preferably undeveloped, and the land was three square miles with a small forest on one edge.

When Steve saw the house he knew it was the one. It was large three story rambling farmhouse. It was still nice enough by modern standards but there was a feeling to it that was antique and shabby. It had a quality that reminded Steve of the boarding house that had been his home with Bucky before the war, although it was easily three times the size of Mrs. Murphy’s cramped clapboard house. Inside the hallways were a bit narrow and he'd have to change the interior doors so Bucky could just push through until he decided to be human again but it didn’t feel as uncomfortable as the other places had.

At the other properties Bucky had shown almost no interest in anything other than staying at Steve's side as he toured; if anything he’d seemed a bit bored. But after watching Steve tour the farmhouse and no doubt reading in his body language that Steve liked it, Bucky took off on a slow easy trot around the outside of the house then turning and heading for the woods. He stayed within sight of Steve but seemed to be sniffing around and doing his own tour.

It struck Steve suddenly that moving out here would probably be the first opportunity Bucky had ever had to run freely outside of the city. They’d never been able to visit the country before the war, and during it was too dangerous and there no privacy for Bucky to shift. Steve felt a bit overwhelmed on Bucky’s behalf, and suddenly fiercely proud of himself that he could give this to Bucky after long last.

“Oh!” Ms. Morales said, “I guess he’d like this new home too!”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, probably grinning like a loon.

When Bucky came back he seemed loose and happy. Steve signed the paperwork the next day. A week later he owned the deed.

-

Jillian Sperling, Bucky’s lawyer, called back as Steve was packing up his meager belongings. As much as it seemed wasteful to him, Natasha convinced him it was a safer decision to leave everything that wasn't personal than to risk hauling a bug or tracking device to a new location. She had even combed his personal belongings to make sure they were clean. 

Steve had been living in bugged apartments since he had come off the ice. He had gotten used to the bizarre pseudo spotlight being an historical icon had put him in. He didn’t have the same recognition as an actual celebrity or nearly as much as Tony. He didn’t get noticed in the streets, but there were requests for him to give speeches to students or to the troops and every once and awhile some journalist will wonder what does Captain America think of the political scandal of the week. Lately even that much of a spotlight felt blinding and suffocating and he didn't want that to be a part of the new life he was envisioning for him and Bucky. He craved quiet anonymity and privacy. He had his fella back, he wanted their simple domesticity back as well.

When he come out of the ice Captain America had been all he had left, but lately it felt more like a chain around his neck than anything he could be proud of.

Jillian’s news was actually good in a morbid sense. It boiled down to the United States government could not afford to have a public trial for the Winter Soldier because it might come to light that he was a Howling Commando, an American icon. 

When Steve had first come out of the ice and begun going on missions it was explained to him that his military actions would be seen as extensions of the United States government whether he liked it or not.

Much in the same way, it would look very very bad if American icon Bucky Barnes was acknowledged to have killed world leaders. Not to mention if, after all this, Barnes still had the full support of Captain America. To the point where it could alienate allies to the brink of war if the incomplete list of assassinations in Bucky’s file was to be believed.

This, while awful because it gave no absolution for what the Winter Soldier had gone through, gave Bucky's legal team a lot of power. It would be bad for Bucky to be revealed as the Winter Soldier, but it would be infinitely worse for the US government.

The plan that Jillian and her team had was to approach the State Department for a pardon and protection from future prosecution in exchange for their silence. Essentially legal blackmail. No doubt the deal would not be as painless as it sounded, but that would be their opening to a negotiation with the State Department. The deal would include Steve because apparently some ambitious senators were making noise about destruction and wanted to blame an individual rather than admit that some of their colleagues had been Hydra.

Jillian had begun drafting the preliminary paperwork, because even though she knew that Steve wanted to get Bucky’s agreement first she said it would be better to have the legal groundwork in place for when Bucky was ready than for something to happen and be caught off guard. She said it would take her team three to four months and ended the conversation with a promise that they’d keep Steve in the loop with regular updates via email on a secure server.

He had to take a break from packing to digest the new information.

Steve crossed the room and sat down next to Bucky, showing him his hand before running it through his dark fur. It was coarse on top but soft and fluffy close to his skin. It looked much healthier than it had even two weeks ago when Bucky had first shown up, Bucky also seemed slightly larger and less emaciated. He looked bigger and healthier than he had even before the war, a steady diet of choice protein doing him good. 

It made Steve want to shiver thinking about how big and strong Bucky would be when he shifted back.

“I know you think it's pointless to do this, but just think about it Bucky. Please. If someone came and took you--if something happened and if I couldn't stop them-- I don't think I could come back from that Buck. Not again. I only want to protect you. That’s all I’m trying to do.”

Bucky lay down and rested his head on Steve's thigh, the warm weight keeping Steve from getting too lost in his fears.

-

Natasha was waiting on the front steps when they pulled up in the moving truck Steve borrowed from Clint. Well, he hadn't so much borrowed as Clint had just said ‘I'll get you a truck, I know a guy’ and then shown up with it an hour after Steve had texted Natasha that he had bought the house. Clint was sitting in the grass on the lawn idly throwing what looked like bits of grass at Natasha.

They both had offered to help him move and Steve had taken them up on it, not because he actually need their help but because he wanted Bucky to get used to his friends. Sam, Natasha, the other Avengers, all a handful of people who had become important to him since he had met them. 

He wanted Bucky to like them as much as he liked them. He’d settle for Bucky not actively disliking them though.

“Steeeve,” Clint rolled to his feet, “Nat has a date tomorrow and she won't tell me who with, won't even tell me if I know the girl.”

“Hey Steve,” Natasha said with a feline smile, ”hey there Dog with No Name.”

“The Dog in Black,” Clint said with a smile.

“Do you have a paw full of dollars? Do you boy?” Natasha knelt trying to slowly approach Bucky from where he hid behind Steve’s legs.

“Nat, he’s the good, the bad, and the furry.”

Steve raised an eyebrow because they were clearly referencing something but he had no idea what.

“It’s from the greatest cowboy movies ever made, The Man with No Name trilogy.” Clint said.

“Lies,” Natasha said, standing back up when it became clear that Bucky was not going to act like a dog and let her pet him, “all cowboy movies are equally awesome.”

“Don’t listen to her Cap, she’s obsessed with spaghetti westerns and has terrible taste.”

“Can I ask why you saw a three legged wolf-dog and thought Barnes?” 

“Oh come on Natasha,” Steve said, smiling as he opened the back of the truck to start grabbing boxes, “I think it's pretty obvious how perfect he'd be for Bucky.”

Natasha and Clint both froze when Bucky growled and snapped at Steve before taking off running towards the forest, but Steve just laughed because there was no actual menace.

“Cap, can I recommend a dog trainer?” Clint said, staring after Bucky.

“Thanks Clint, but he doesn’t need one, he’s just a bit rough around the edges is all.”

“Okay!” Natasha said, clapping her hands together, “So, as moving gift Stark and I took care of your furniture and isolating your utilities so that no one can get at you by tampering with the local grid. So how about we get this stuff settled and then we order pizza and I show you the eternal glory that is Clint Eastwood as the Man in with No Name and change your sad life forever.”

Later that night, sitting on the couch listening to Natasha and Clint jeer at the movies, with Bucky lying just inside of Steve’s peripheral vision it almost felt like the farmhouse could maybe a home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is retrospective and probably gassy after eating at least 10 meat sticks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a computer now! or at least a tablet with a keyboard so writing is going to be so much easier than typing it all on my phone. Thank you for the comments and kudos and I hope you guys are enjoying this.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.

Here what Bucky wants, because he is allowed to want:

To be near Steve.   
To always be touching Steve.   
To crawl into his skin so they can never be separated.

But sometimes:  
To be far away from Steve. Sometimes the touch of gentle fingers through his fur, the familiar sound of Steve's voice, the way his sweet scent sticks to Bucky and is always just a little tinged with love and joy when he looks at Bucky is too much, too sweet, so good it makes Bucky's skin crawl, it makes him want to howl. It makes him want to cry.

To always be the wolf because they never could control the wolf. Because no one else knows the wolf exists. Because it feels so good, so good, after so long.

But sometimes:   
To be the man, to have an arm he can wrap around Steve and hold him tightly.   
To feel nice.   
To kiss.   
To have sex. Because Bucky wants it no matter what his form, but while Steve always smells of love he only smells of attraction, lust, when he looks at the man.

To never take his eyes off Steve.

For Steve to never have to look at him again.

-

Bucky likes the house. It doesn't quite smell like him and Steve but Bucky can imagine a time in a couple years where the smell would sink right into the floorboards. It will start smelling right soon enough. 

He's always lived in the city, for as long as he can remember. His first memory, the earliest one he's gotten back, was of meeting Steve. He is, always has been, a bit idly curious about where he came from because he's never met another wolf in his life but it's irrelevant. Because by the time he'd known Steve for a year, he'd realized he was tied to the other boy for life.

Despite all that he likes the country. Living out here without a million other smells and noises, well, it soothes a tightness in him that he didn't know existed. Like the quietness outside of him brings out a quietness inside of him.

He had been worried that he'd love it and Steve would hate it but Steve seems more settled every day. Bucky can see him dropping his guard, he's startling awake less in the night, the sharpness in his eyes has disappeared, and his scent is healthier and content. This soothes Bucky even more. They've only been here a week, Bucky can only imagine how settled they'd feel if they're allowed a month, six months, a year.

He both wants to be human and doesn't, his wolf won't let go. He guesses that it's a combination of the pain of not shifting for seventy years and the crippling fear of how the man can be controlled. He remembers that there were trigger words that force the man to obey. He's scared that those are still in his brain, that whatever healing allowed him to remember wasn't extended to the words. He's scared if he shifts he will be caught and used as a weapon again.

After the first week, Steve seemed to have accepted that the wolf is the Bucky he's going to get. There's no sign that he is upset with Bucky, the smell of warm affection rolls off of him every time he sees Bucky, with no sign of regret. He sometimes chatters, jokes in their old way and in a new way now that Bucky cannot chatter back.

Sometimes he's quiet though and the warm affection is tempered by more negative feelings. Bucky knows these are not directed at him, that the rage and grief and sorrow are not because of something he's done, but he feels the urge to flee at the scent of these emotions and the sight of how Steve's shoulders hunch up and his face shuts down. He feels the urge to run because the need to scoop Steve up, gather him up in two strong arms and cradle him cannot be indulged even if Bucky was the man.

Steve worries in a way he never did before, and he mother hens; it's almost hilarious the way that he tries to figure out how to care for Bucky, do for Bucky without treating him like a dog. Bucky had watched, amused, when Steve ordered a dog shampoo online then clearly regretted it when it arrived. Then he changed his mind and had delicately tried to explain to Bucky that he stunk and that the dog shampoo wasn't a commentary just that it might be healthier for his fur.

Bucky knew it was because before, before his death and the war, it had been the one thing that Bucky had been prickly about. Well about himself anyways, anyone tried to say a word against his Steve and they'd find themselves in a world of pain. But about himself, he'd get so sensitive if someone saw his wolf form, if someone called him a dog, if Steve was forced to play along. He knew back then that it wasn't Steve's fault, he was just keeping Bucky's secret but something in Bucky would get so offended and need to insist to Steve that he was not a dog. 

That sensitive part of himself had long been burned out.

Now he didn't mind. He didn't mind that Steve pretended he was a pet or did things for him that pet owners did. Steve didn't treat him like a dog, even when they were around people. 

Bucky actually liked it.

He had always been the one taking care of Steve, something that he honestly missed. But he had never had anyone take care of him, even when he wasn't being actively terrorized by fucking Nazis. So to have Steve not only try and anticipate his every need, but then meet them without Bucky even prompting, it felt like he had been carrying a burden for so long that could finally be put down. It felt so good to be able to trust. 

Another reason to be the wolf rather than the man. The man's instincts screamed when faced with prospect of trusting anyone, even Steve. But the wolf knew, knew better that to trust lessons taught by cruel men. Knew how to trust his pack, his Steve, right down to his bones. Even if he was the man, he doubted he would be able to touch Steve like he wanted to. Better to stay the wolf for now and give them both the affection that they were so starved for.

On the other hand it was supremely irritating not to be able to yell at Steve for being a fucking idiot. He could bite, nip, and growl, making his displeasure known, he'd even considered ripping up Steve's pillows. But ultimately Bucky had known Steve too long to really believe he could talk him out of the very bad idea that he was currently fixated on.

The stubborn set of his jaw and his adamant refusal to budge would be familiar and comforting if the stupid little punk wasn't attempting to permanently attach himself to Winter Soldier in the minds of people with power.

Bucky honestly thought Steve and the attorney's optimistic attempts to blackmail the US State Department to be hilariously naive at best and dangerously foolish at worst. Their assessment that the US could not formally acknowledge the Winter Soldier as Bucky Barnes was correct, but the idea that Steve and Bucky would be allowed to live peaceably within US borders after waving the double red flags of notorious assassin for Hydra and blackmail in the government's face. Well. It was so funny it was a joke. The only reason it would even work was because Steve was Captain America, they were gambling on the social power of him being a national icon. But it was the only real power Steve had and it was dwindling like Cap's popularity after the fall out from recent events.

Bucky was pretty sure that after this plan was put into motion, they'd wake up one morning to a government sanctioned hit squad sent to find and bring down the Winter Soldier. Not that he was scared for himself, it's just that Steve would fight to the death for him. If they came for him before he could turn back into a man, they might take Steve and question him, they might kill Steve to draw him out.

Seventy years as a first hand witness of the kinds of things that nation states could get up to in the shadows, to what nation states could get away with, had taught him to never trust the official story and to know that any sordid misdeed could be covered up.

But Bucky can't explain this, and even if he could Steve might not listen. The stupid fool that he was, Steve was going to try everything in his power to make sure that Bucky was never taken from him again. 

Bucky knew this because he felt the exact same way. He’d rather die than to live without Steve again.

-

Steve’s new friends insisted on having a housewarming party.

Bucky was honestly very uncomfortable with Steve having friends, which made him feel both awful and unrepentant at the same time. 

He had always been a bit of a possessive bastard when it came to Steve. Not that he ever stopped Steve from doing anything or kept him locked up in their boarding room like a princess. Honestly it was a toss up if Bucky could ever make Steve do anything, the stubborn little shit that he was.

But Steve had never had to be jealous of Bucky’s attentions a day in his life. It wasn’t that Bucky loved Steve more, or that Steve loved Bucky less, it’s just things were different for Bucky than they were for Steve.

For Bucky, the center of his universe was always Steve. Steve was his best friend, his only pack member, and the love of his life. As human as Bucky could be, many things about him were driven by the wolf and the wolf’s instincts. If the people around him weren’t threats and weren’t pack, they were uninteresting to him. He was a polite boy, good looking with the best manners that the nuns could drill into his head, but he wasn’t interested in making friends outside of Steve.

Steve on the other hand, awkward and prickly as he was, was always eager and willing to befriend someone. And people wanted to befriend him back, Steve was the guy who would stick up for you when no one else would, and although sometimes he could be brash and angry over even the smallest injustice, people noticed his kindness and would respond. That was doubled when he’d received the serum and even shallow people began to take notice of Bucky’s best guy. All of their friends before the war had been Steve’s friends first; even the Commandos, although they had respected Bucky as a soldier, had not really attempted to bond with him until Steve smoothed the way.

And that was something that should have made Bucky happy, people seeing Steve shine as brightly as he does, the fact that his guy was never too alone even when Bucky couldn’t be there for him. But there was always that small corner of him that resented sharing him with the world, that resented the fact that while Steve could be everything to him, he could not always be everything to Steve.

So he was sulking in the corner of the living room watching as Steve pulled out the snacks he had gotten for the occasion. For the first time since the ice Steve was taking the time to really learn the new century, or at least that was the excuse that he gave Bucky for the fact that he had only recently discovered the joys of online shopping. Steve had spent a whole day flipping out over everything that he could buy and had ordered all their groceries, except for Bucky’s meat which came from a local butcher, and any supplies they needed online since. 

He had made some sideways comments that Bucky took to mean that he was worried about people recognizing him and finding the house. Which made his adorable excitement make sense if it was understood as part excitement but mostly relief. 

Bucky retreated to the dining room when Steve’s friends trickled in, Sam first bringing a tub of butter and some seasoning for the popcorn because according him Steve could not be trusted to make anything not ready made. Bucky would have been offended on Steve’s behalf but he’d lived with the man in two different centuries and that seemed about right. Then Natasha and Clint, bringing a flashdrive full of movies and snagging several bags of candy before settling in on one of the couches. Steve sat on the longest couch and oddly stretched out so no one else could sit while Sam sat in a large cushioned chair,making a comment about sharing to Steve. Steve just shrugged. 

Bucky was bemused because Steve was not one to take up an unnecessary amount of space, he always seemed in the process of trying to fold in on himself as if trying to reclaim the smaller man he used to be. It wasn’t until Steve brought out the meat sticks that Bucky understood what he was doing. 

Steve ate these things he just called meat sticks, and they were just meat that looked like a stick, and had let Bucky try them. Bucky had loved them, they were spicy and savory and interesting tasting. So Steve had ordered them in bulk online and he knew that they were Bucky’s weakness.

After hesitating for bit, Bucky decided that meat sticks and Steve outweighed the other people in the living room. He quietly slunk into the room, trying to minimize his bulk, sidling up to Steve and attempting to snag the bag of meat sticks so he could retreat. Steve kept ahold of the bag and patted his lap. Bucky didn’t want to have a full on argument about it because he was well aware he acted oddly enough for a dog as is, so crawled up to settle on Steve’s legs, accepting a reward of being fed bites of the meat stick.

Steve and his friends chattered while they watched the movie, it was something that was supposed to be funny but Bucky didn’t really follow it. He was trying to settle the conflicting emotions in his chest. On the one hand there was Steve and the tasty meat sticks, and the good comfort of sitting together on the couch, but there were strangers also, and dangerous ones at that. Both Sam and Clint were much deadlier than they looked or acted and the Widow was even more deadly than she seemed. 

Bucky did not like to have them in his home near his Steve, but he did like the fact that they made Steve laugh. Bucky was reminded of the way that he’d sit back around the fire and the Commandos and Steve would unwind while Bucky quietly watched, content to be at Steve’s side while he was happy. 

He’d overheard Sister Rose once tell Steve that he, Bucky, was a lonely sort of person. Steve had disagreed, saying that Bucky had him so he couldn’t be lonely. Bucky could understand what she meant now, while he had Steve, which meant he’d never need much companionship outside the other man, there was a loneliness to not being like anyone around him. Steve, although he’d always love him and take Bucky exactly as he came, would never fully understand the duality of being both the man and the wolf. He understood a lot about Bucky, but he’d never understand what that felt like. 

Sometimes Bucky wondered if, like Steve needed human friendship outside of Bucky, maybe Bucky would find it easier to make friends outside of Steve if they were with people like him, if there there were other werewolves somewhere in the world.

It was natural to wonder where he came from. Before the war he remembered wondering the same thing, although now he remembers nothing before Steve whereas then he knew he had had some sort of memories of where he came from. He doesn’t remember talking about it much, but perhaps when he’s finally able to talk to Steve he’ll ask him.

Maybe that can be something he can find out, now that they have resources, just for himself.

“Okay, dude, is no one gonna mention how gross that is?” Sam’s voice was slightly louder than before, cutting into Bucky’s introspection.

When everyone looked at him in confusion Sam just gestured at Steve and Bucky.

“He’s sharing bites with the dog.”

“Hey, dogs’ mouths are cleaner than human mouths.” Clint piped up.

“That’s not even true,” Sam said, “not to mention the fact that dogs lick their own assholes, Steve do you want to lick the dog’s asshole?”

Bucky was very glad he was the wolf because he was struck with a very vivid memory of almost that exact scenario.

Steve must have thought of that same memory because he turned bright pink and gave a weird high pitched giggle.

“That’s disgusting Sam! Oh my goodness.”

“Calm down there grandpa,” Natasha drawled, “it was a joke, no one is suggesting you rim the dog.”

If Bucky could speak he’d say ‘I’m suggesting it.’ just to see Steve go that shade of pink and make that sound again. But he wasn’t. and he found the idea of them joking about Steve having sex with him was uncomfortable. 

He snagged the bag of meat sticks and made a break for it, going upstairs to lay in the closet in their room. He liked it because it was just big enough to fit him comfortably, and it smelled like Steve because of his clothes. 

It wasn’t sex itself that made him uncomfortable, it was really the idea that in this form he couldn’t give it to Steve even though he wanted to. He knew that Steve wanted the man that way still, sometimes Bucky would hear him jerking off in the shower and he’d come out later damp and smelling lonely. 

But until his wolf was ready to shift, there wasn’t much he could do about so in the meantime he was going to sit safely in the dark and eat the meat sticks and listen to his Steve laughing downstairs.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruh-roh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So work is pretty crazy for me right now, like 80 hour weeks for the past three weeks (but hey I got a promotion and raise so it's 80 hour weeks with more money per hour so yay?) and it's going to be like this for at least a month. But in February my promotion becomes effective and I'm getting much better hours so I may not update for a month but next month I might write more? 
> 
> Also there's a cliffhanger at the end of this chapter. Just to warn you.
> 
> See the end for trigger warnings for this chapter, involving slightly sexual content and mental illness.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.

Steve ran his hands up Bucky’s sides, feeling the way his muscles bunched and moved beneath the skin. Bucky laughed and grabbed Steve’s wrists, pinning them above his head as he pinned the rest of Steve’s skinny body with his own larger one.

Steve jerked his hips up as much as he could, chasing delicious friction. He could feel Bucky’s cock hard and thick pressed against his hip.

“Bucky,” Steve moaned, “Bucky, please.”

His arms were suddenly wrapped around Bucky and he clung to him with all the strength his skinny arms had, Bucky rubbed his face against Steve’s. His stubble felt soft instead of scratchy. Bucky turned his head and nipped Steve on the chin then licked him. 

Then he did it again, but harder, licking him again as if to soothe the bite.

“Ow Bucky. Stop biting me. I love you.” Steve said, but his voice came out slow and slurred like he was half-asleep or drunk.

Bucky bit him again, hard enough that finally Steve startle awake, to find himself wrapped around wolf Bucky, squeezing him probably harder than was comfortable and, to Steve’s mortification, humping his flank.

It was probably the first time Steve could remember feeling so embarrassed in front of Bucky that he wanted to flee the room.

It did not help that his dick was still obviously hard in his boxers, pointing up at him like an accusation.

Steve wanted to go jerk off in the shower, he wanted to go for a run, he wanted Bucky to be a man again if only for a little while. The first two he couldn’t do because they’d wake Natasha in the guest room downstairs, her hearing nearly as sharp as his own and her guard farther up than she ever let on. The third one was not really up to him and not really fair of him to even voice.

Remembering that his best friend had been forced to live in one form for seventy years wilted Steve’s hard-on enough that he flopped back down on his back.

“‘M’sorry Buck.” Steve said, running a hand down Bucky’s side and soothing the fur where he’d mused it. “I’m getting wet dreams like I’m a horny little fourteen year old. ‘s embarrassing.”

Bucky nipped Steve’s ear, much more gently than the wake up bite, then settled back against Steve with a contented huff.

At least one of them was comfortable.

He felt restless and unsatisfied and embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable, he was definitely not getting any more sleep. But it was enough to lay next to Bucky in the early hours of the morning.

-

When he heard the first creaks of the floorboards downstairs, Steve got up and got his running gear on, he timed his trip downstairs so he’d meet Sam on his way back from the bathroom.

“Come on Wilson, we’re burning daylight.”

Sam glared at him, Steve suspected he was more than a little hungover.

“Fuck off Rogers, I’m on my weekend away. I’m not getting run into the ground by a supersoldier on my vacation weekend.”

“I think you’re just scared that my three legged dog will beat you like I did.”

“Eat my entire ass, Rogers.” Sam said as he shut the door to the guest room in his face.

Natasha popped her head out of the room down the hall, she somehow looked perfectly put together even though Steve had not heard her moving around at all.

“I’ll run with you Rogers, give me five minutes.” 

Steve blinked in surprise before he nodded and went to set out pre-run food for himself and Bucky.

Steve felt weird giving Bucky supplies meant for a dog because Bucky was not a dog. Bucky was his favorite person in the universe, but he did it because they made Bucky’s life in this form easier. The bowl for food and the running water water dish thing made it easy for Bucky to eat and drink neatly, the shampoo wouldn’t irritate his skin or damage his fur or make him smell too strongly. He had explained to Bucky his reasoning and Bucky had indicated that he was okay. In fact Bucky seemed more amused by Steve’s conflicted feelings than anything else when it came to the dog care supplies.

Bucky gobbled his food, but honestly he shouldn’t have bothered. While Bucky had begun to relax about letting Steve further away from him than fifteen feet, Steve figured that that relaxation did not extend to the Black Widow being near, so he made sure to wait until Bucky was ready to run as well before they headed out. 

Steve’s favorite route was a circuitous trail that more or less skirted the property. It was slightly rough terrain which made it good full body exercise to run it, so looping around on it three or four times took the edge off of his excess energy and left him feeling settled and satisfied for the day. 

He started at a medium pace. Natasha was faster than other people, enough that they both secretly suspected that she’d been enhanced to some degree by the Red Room. There was no way to know for sure without blood tests and when they’d discussed it neither of them wanted to risk someone finding out. Steve because he knew the intimately the price that people would put on Natasha’s cells and Natasha because she did not want to risk losing control over any aspect of her body. She’d told Steve once that on one hand she was lucky to not have to live with the memories but on the other it was terrifying trying to guess what was missing in the gaps in her head.

When they were a half mile from the house, on the flat side of the property where it would be hard to sneak up on them, Natasha stopped and turned to Steve.

“I know the two of you are probably having the time of your lives playing house Steve, but you’ve got to get a move on with exonerating him. It’s not his only problem but it will make everything else easier to manage.”

Steve felt a little betrayed but mostly unsurprised, he’d been trying to get Natasha to run with him since they’d become friends and this was the first time she’d ever said yes. So of course he had suspected there was some ulterior motive.

Also a little miffed because he was in fact having the time of his life playing house. Bucky and himself, warm, safe, secure, and comfortable was pretty much the only thing that Steve had ever wanted out of life.

“First of all, I don’t know where Bucky is. Second of all, I know that we need to get the legal stuff taken care of, we’ve got lawyers working on it now. I’m just waiting until I have Bucky’s permission before they move forward.”

Natasha gives Steve a look that says ‘don’t bullshit the bullshitter’.

“And how do you know that he’s against the idea if you haven’t been in contact with Barnes? Actually you know what, I’m not playing that game. I know he’s living here with you even if he hides himself better than I thought he would. You’re an open book to those of us who know how to read you. Also I’ll give you a million dollars if you look me in the eye and tell me that you’re the one that trained that dog.”

“He came pre-trained.”

“Uh-huh, and you’re just that good with both dogs and following instructions that you can keep a headstrong breed from picking up bad habits.”

Steve paused and then gave up trying to convince Natasha. It was honestly a futile effort lying to her.

“How do you know so much about dog breeds anyways?”

“Clint is my platonic life partner and that boy’s three favorite shows are Dog Cops and everything on the Discovery Channel or Cartoon Network. I have approximate knowledge of many things.”

That sounded like a reference but to what Steve didn’t know. 

“It’s not that I don’t trust you Nat. Because I do, with my life.”

“But not with his?”

“Natasha…” Steve trailed off unable to explain, how he trusted her with his life, with Bucky’s life, but that it felt like too much to acknowledge.

With Bucky back it felt like the first moment of peace that Steve had had in years. He’d watched the love of his life die before his eyes and then had to live without him for such a long time. Now he finally was back at Bucky’s side and to talk about it out loud felt like exposing something fragile and precious to the world.

“Steve,” Natasha’s voice was more gentle than normal, he always forgot just how much she saw, “just tell me that you will pass along what I said. We need to get in front of legality issues, everything else can be dealt with but without some sort of pardon there isn’t a country out there that will knowingly hide him without attempting to use him.”

“I’ll pass it along.” Steve said with a tight nod, behind Nat’s back he could see Bucky was tense but looking away as if pretending he wasn’t listening to the conversation.

Natasha smiled, visible switching tracks, her body language going loose and playful.

“Good. Now in reward for a much less dramatic acknowledgement of Barnes than I was expecting, I will run the rest of the trail with you.”

Steve knew she was being patronizing but he couldn’t help perking up at that and received a long suffering look from Bucky from behind Natasha’s back.

After Natasha finished the lap and went inside, Steve ran for five more laps. He had hoped that Bucky would join him so that they could talk about what Natasha said but he’d laid down on the porch and hadn’t followed, so Steve’d left him alone.

Steve’s favorite mornings were the ones where and Bucky got up and followed their quiet routine and had a quiet day. But returning from his run and finding Clint in the kitchen making pecan waffles and Sam and Natasha arm wrestling for his last k-cup of pumpkin spice coffee, Steve thought that this morning could easily be his second favorite type.

-

Since the helicarrier Steve had tried not to think about the years he had believed Bucky was dead. 

Those early days had been dark, still reeling from the loss of his friends and the loss of Bucky, the loss of his whole world and then having to swallow the bitter pill of being turned back into a chorus girl. His memory had been used and tarnished by men who he never would have agreed with. He had attempted to set them straight, to the point where he felt like he was saying ‘I didn't say that/I don't think that’ more than anything meaningful. 

Someone online made a video cut of all of his press conferences and put it to a rap song that went ‘keep my name out your mouth’. It almost made him want social media just so he could share it. Natasha had found it hilarious.

But now people were talking about him less, seemingly uncomfortable with the reminder that the world had almost been taken over again. 

Still, Steve always took certain precautions coming and going from the house. The day after he had moved in, he had bought a small SUV style car that had made Clint laugh and ask Steve if he was a lesbian, to which Steve had replied “Barton you know I’m strictly dickly.” which had made both Natasha and Clint choke with laughter. 

In the back of the car Steve had put several blankets and pillows and the space was just large enough for Bucky to sit or lay comfortably. Before every drive they’d check the car for trackers and Bucky would stay in the car during the whole trip so they’d know if someone else put something on the car. 

Steve would drive a slow winding route through various back roads before entering town or heading to the house. He didn’t think anyone was actively after him but there were people who were actively after Bucky and if those people knew who the Winter Soldier actually was then Steve would be someone to watch.

As it was he was mostly left alone. He made two trips into town a week, on Mondays and Fridays, to get his orders from the P.O. box, to pick up their meat order from the butcher, mostly for Bucky but also some for Steve, and then to get the groceries that he couldn’t get online without giving his home address, mostly fresh fruits and vegetables. 

Steve always had several packages because he really enjoyed online shopping. There was always a little rush when he bought things and there was none of the anxiety of people judging him that he felt while in stores. Plus he could afford to get himself and Bucky whatever they wanted now, which really excited him. 

But because of that, every time he checked the box he had to get in line to turn in the slips and get the packages, but there was nowhere to park so that he could still see Bucky while at the postmaster’s counter. He could handle being out of sight of Bucky for five minutes, but it gave him anxiety when it was out in public.

The Monday following the weekend with Sam, Natasha, and Clint was no different than usual; he hurried through getting the packages, just two smallish ones containing meat sticks, some pasta, and some candy, and one with a notebook and some drawing pencils because he wanted to get back into drawing properly. But when he came out, he felt his stomach clench with dread.

There was a woman, a stranger, leaning close to the car, obviously speaking to Bucky through where Steve had left the window cracked. Bucky was not even looking at her, his body was very tense and he was looking at Steve as if he’d been waiting for him to come back.

The woman stopped talking when Steve approached, trying to appear calm until he had a full read of the situation.

It was hard because Bucky looked so tense, Steve wanted to stand between him and this woman until Bucky looked relaxed again.

“Sorry,” She said when Steve got closer, “it’s just you’ve got a very lovely wolf. How on earth did you train him to tolerate small spaces?”

Her smile wasn’t terribly friendly and there was something familiar about her that Steve couldn’t quite put his finger on which set off alarm bells in the back of his mind. If she was familiar was it because she’d been around, following them, watching Bucky? If she knew somehow what Bucky was, would she know who he was? There was no mention of the wolf in the small file that Natasha had found but that doesn’t mean that Hydra didn’t know, and if they knew who and what he was it would be obvious when a wolf started living Captain America who and what that wolf was.

Steve suddenly realized he’d been quiet for too long. 

“He just does,” Steve tried to sound polite but failed, “excuse me.”

He got into the car shoving his packages into the other seat and then took off. He drove just long enough to be sure that no one followed him and then pulled over on a side street. He popped the trunk and sat on the bumper, tangling his fingers in Bucky’s fur. 

“Did she say something--was she dangerous?”

Bucky leaned into his touch, Steve could feel the way his muscles trembled. Bucky gave his version of a shrug, before huffing and licking Steve’s chin.

“Was she Hydra, the government, Shield, someone else?”

Bucky shook his head at each name and then after someone else he nodded then gave a whine and a shrug. He licked at Steve until Steve’s heart stopped racing and then gently nudged at him until Steve let go and stood up. He growled and nipped at Steve’s hands when he tried to suggest going right home. Clearly insisting they run the rest of their errands before going back to the house.

Still Steve took an extra half hour to get home, winding around the back roads and looking in his mirror for signs of a tail.

-

Steve noticed that Bucky was clingy and tense the whole rest of the week. He didn’t even let Steve shower alone, following him into the bathroom and tugging on Steve’s clothes until he followed when Bucky went out. Not that Steve blamed Bucky, he was feeling much the same way.

He had discussed the situation with Natasha, but she just told him he was being paranoid because she thought Bucky was just a dog. All she said was that he had a very distinctive wolf-dog and that people would notice but not because they were after anyone.

Still, even after an uneventful Friday outing, Steve felt itchy in his own skin. Bucky had always looked out for him, cared for him, saved him in every way. Steve knew that he’d have been dead or had a supremely unhappy life if he hadn’t come across his friend in the alley that day. Instead their life together had been shabby but charmed, as if the love they had for each other had created a little shield around the two of them that had lasted until Bucky’d been drafted. 

Bucky had done that, given him the best life Steve could imagine, and still when it had mattered Steve had failed him. A failure that grew worse the more Steve learned about it. He wasn’t ever about to let that happen again, but it wasn’t as if he had wanted to not catch Bucky the first time. The woman by the car had just brought to the forefront of his mind the subconscious fear that this was all a temporary bubble of happiness, that Bucky would be snatched from him again, that Steve would fail Bucky again. 

It had been one of those weeks, where before getting Bucky back he’d lie in his bed and sleep for 18 hours a day. But Bucky didn’t allow that. Nipping and bullying Steve until he finished his daily routines. After the Friday trip Bucky grabbed Steve’s notebook in his mouth and then growled until Steve picked up his pencils and followed Bucky into yard. 

Steve sat on the porch with Bucky draped over his lap, using Bucky’s back as a rest for his book while he drew. He drew the morning with Sam, Natasha, and Clint, except this time he put human Bucky there. Even in his drawing Bucky was tense and nervous, a bit too watchful, keeping near Steve, but in his drawing Steve’s friends didn’t hold it against Bucky, just accepted him out of love for Steve.

It made him feel so much better, and he was thinking of framing it and keeping in their bedroom while he was shading in the background. 

He was much calmer than he’d been all week until Bucky suddenly tensed and then stood up standing in front of Steve with a low growl.

Walking down their driveway came the stranger, the woman from town, flanked by two more people. 

For the first time since coming to the country Steve wanted to be holding his shield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all the *penis* that Steve feels when he's half-asleep is Bucky's foot because like you know wolves feet do that long flat thing when they lay down. This is not the sex with full shift werewolf kind of story. Sorry.
> 
> Second of all this chapter talks a bit about Steve's guilt and depression issues. Idr if I mentioned this before but Steve was this close to having a therapist in this fic and that's because he needs one. He has also been through pretty significant trauma and while he's keeping it together that doesn't just go away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talk about a power move...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I said August but I've been pounding this out faster than expected. So here it is, the conclusion to the cliffhanger. 
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Emrya for their betaing check out their tumblr [notreallyhereforthat](https://notreallyhereforthat.tumblr.com)
> 
> I've given up on my fandom blog but my main is [vilesbian](https://vilesbian.tumblr.com) if you're into that.  
> Anyways enjoy.

Bucky had spent the whole week thinking about the woman from the post office. He had smelled what she was when she leaned near the car, she had acted like she was sniffing him which felt rather rude and he hadn’t particularly liked her near their car, especially when Steve was nearby.

Hadn’t particularly liked her near Steve.

There was a small part of him that whispered she could have the answers to at least what he was. He’d never met another werewolf in his entire life, he knew that for sure because there had been no mistaking what the woman was. It was a bit overwhelming to know now he was not the only one.

But mostly he was worried about Steve, his instincts screamed at him to tend to his little one person pack and worry about the stranger later.

When Steve had come out, he’d been so freaked out, his mind going to the worst case scenario, distress pouring off of him in waves to point that even if Bucky had found a way to communicate what the woman was, he probably would have still left it until Steve calmed down. 

But the incident had revealed something that Bucky was rather ashamed of missing, looking after Steve’s well being was his responsibility and Steve was not doing great. Then entire week after the incident Bucky found himself taking care of Steve as much as Steve was taking care of him. As nice as being taken care of was, it settled something in Bucky to know that Steve needed him. 

He was concerned about his Stevie. The way he went straight to his worst fear and the way that it stuck with him, anxiety and fear clouding his scent for days afterwards, was troubling. Steve had been so happy and comforted to have him back, the contentment that he exuded whenever Bucky was near him had led Bucky to believe that his fella was handling things alright. Now Bucky wasn’t so sure. 

Some days he wanted to tear through Hydra for what they did to both of them.

He wished he could talk to Steve, to lay out how he was feeling and ask pointed questions until Steve stopped hiding. He wished he could discuss how scared he was of being hopeful about finding someone else like himself. He wished he could hold Steve, so tightly that his guy felt like he could let go, and to feel Steve’s strong arms slide around his ribs and be held in return. But he wasn’t sure he could be human right, he was still pulling himself together.

But while he worried about Steve, what he thought about most over the past week was that woman. She hadn’t smelled aggressive, just cautious and curious. However his instincts said she was a threat, a werewolf he didn't know that he could only assume she was as strong as he was.

He had expected to see her again, she either lived nearby or was in the area because of Bucky, so they would definitely see her again. But he did not expect that she'd come right onto their property.

Back when he and Steve had been living in the orphanage occasionally a sister would come into their room, usually for a weekly inspection or something similar. Every time Bucky felt a twinge of irritation at someone who wasn't Steve in his room, but he'd never really considered himself territorial until he came in to find one of Steve's friends waiting on one of the beds. It was technically Steve’s but the two of them shared Bucky’s bed every night so it was only ever used for about thirty minutes during the bedtime checks.

The boy, Bucky’d long forgotten his name, was a friend of Steve’s but he was not always the kindest friend that Steve had, Bucky felt like he was using Steve whenever he came around to ‘study’. He did not care for the boy, but Steve shrugged off his concerns.

Seeing him, in Bucky’s room touching Steve’s bed, had struck something deep inside of Bucky’s wolf and he suddenly wanted to rip out the boy’s throat with his teeth. To drag him out of the room and make sure that he never touched something of Bucky’s ever again.

He had kept control of himself that day in the orphanage but it had always brought a touch of rage that he’d have to hold back whenever someone entered his space who wasn’t supposed to be there. It made him want to shift to the wolf and chase them off.

The strangers brought back the feeling, intensified by the idea that they could be a threat to Steve. He couldn’t help the vicious sounding snarl that ripped from his throat or the overwhelming desire to place himself between the strangers and Steve.

The strangers stopped about halfway down the driveway, which was closer than Bucky would have liked but far enough away. He could hear Steve’s breathing speed up, and smell the touch of panic on him.

“Bucky, my shield is upstairs.” Steve said in a low tone.

Bucky turned his head so he could see Steve out the corner of his eye, he could see the shift from Steve Rogers at home to Captain America. 

Which was good as much as it was bad. Bucky could only assume that all werewolves were at least as strong as himself and he was already down a leg, plus had never really fought anyone as the wolf who wasn’t already running away. Steve needed to defend himself.

He just hated that Steve felt the need to defend himself already in their new home.

“You said they’re not Hydra? You’re sure?” Steve asked, still speaking in a low tone that wouldn’t carry. 

Bucky reluctantly nodded.

“Okay, so whatever they’re here for, we will handle it. Between the two of us we can handle three people, no matter what their intentions are. If they’re armed we can retreat and draw them into the house, The corridors are narrow and we can take them on one at a time, plus there are multiple exits in that we both can survive a drop from a story or two.”

Bucky lowly growled and snapped his teeth in frustration.

“Buck, there is no point in starting a fight until we have to. If they’re not Hydra, then we don’t know who they are and what they want. So let’s find out.”

Bucky felt supremely irritated first at the strangers for coming into his territory, and second at Steve. He didn’t want him to start a fight. He just wanted Steve to use all of his resources, i.e. his shield and maybe a gun, to defend himself against potential threats. The shield did jack shit if Steve left it upstairs.

He wished he was larger so that standing in front of Steve at least covered most of the giant idiot.

“You ready to approach?”

No, no he was not ready, threats from strangers and anger aside, Bucky felt nervous for some godforsaken reason and that was strange feeling as he wolf. But if they lingered on the porch then strangers might come closer so they might as well get it over with.

There was a weird sort of struggle where both he and Steve tried to put themselves between the other man and the strangers until Bucky snarled and Steve let him go first. He kept his senses open as he approached, but didn’t feel anyone else nearby.

The three strangers smelled friendly as he got closer, right away he could tell they were all wolves, there was the faint reek of nervous sweat and a little bit of some faintly floral earthy smell that reminded him of gardens, and the smell of peaches and sugar. Bucky did not read too much into the sweat, Steve was a big guy all by himself and Bucky was a big mean looking wolf, he’d be more concerned if the strangers were totally at ease.

The woman, who had been by their car, looked as if she was in her sixties, dark hair turning to salt and pepper, tanned weathered skin, and dark brown eyes. She wore a neutral but pleasant expression, lips turning up at the corner but not quite a smile. Next to her, on the left, was a middle aged woman who was several shades darker than the first, with grey eyes and a similar enough nose and chin for Bucky to guess they were related. On that woman’s right was a man who also looked like he was edging past middle age, he was tall but thin and wiry the way some old men get when their bodies get worn down after years of hard labor, his most noticeable feature was his giant nose that seemed to take more space on his narrow face than any nose rightfully should. 

They looked like the same country folk as the rest of the people Bucky’d seen on their trips to town. They looked like anyone else.

As a fighter, even when he was a little guy, some of Steve’s best moves were using his opponent's momentum against them, grabbing them and swinging with the weight of their body as they were off balance, or hitting them while they were falling, letting their momentum drive them into his fist or shield for hard hits. As a tactician, Steve’s brilliance lay in being direct where people would not expect directness. You cover your weak spots and are surprised while Steve bashes down your front door. Which is not to say that Steve never does something sneaky but one Steve's biggest strengths is his ability to always be aware of the metaphorical cards he held and to play to those strengths.

So really there was no excuse to be caught off guard by a similar tactic. 

“You know,” The woman started, “when I saw you park, with your friend here in the backseat, well it occurred to me that it would make sense that Captain America was a wolf, I mean what else could survived since the 1940s and still be able to fight off aliens.” 

She was looking at Bucky as she said this, but also not looking directly at him. It reminded him of how someone might looking at a wild dog. He didn’t know if he was irritated or gratified to be treated as the dangerous thing he was.

It felt odd to be acknowledged as dangerous. Before the war, during the war, standing between Steve and danger and seeing the fear in their enemies’ eyes, it made him feel powerful. There was not a lot that felt as good to his wolf than protecting Steve. But now, now that he was exactly the monster that people saw, a killer and an assassin who slaughtered innocents, he suddenly realized he did not like seeing fear. 

He’d did not like knowing he put that there. 

“Who are you? What do you want?” Steve asked, his voice was authoritative, radiating Captain America. 

The whole scenario made Bucky feel tired and oddly brittle. The first members of his species that he’d ever met, and they couldn’t trust them. The government and their wars, Hydra and their torture, six of one half a dozen of the other, both had stolen two boys from Brooklyn. Stolen their ability to trust, their ability to live their lives without fear, they’d put shadows in Steve’s eyes and made him closed and suspicious where he’d been kind and friendly. They’d made Bucky a shadow of himself, unable to even access his humanity. 

He tried to shift, and again like all the times before failed. He looked up at the woman who at the moment shifted her eyes to his, she seemed to see something in them that made the tension drain out of her.

“I’m Olivia Proctor and I’m not here to talk to you Captain, I’m here to talk to the lone wolf. You should know better than to enter a pack’s territory without permission.” She said addressing Bucky, despite her words her tone was no longer unkind, “You will shift, we will discuss the terms of your living here.”

“James does not have to shift unless he wants to!” Steve’s tone had also shifted, moved further from his Captain’s voice and closer to Stevie Rogers defending the defenseless. 

The woman was still holding eye contact with Bucky, her eyes calculating but less cold than they were a few minutes ago.

“James cannot shift, can you?” She asked Bucky.

He nodded his head, his confusion probably apparent in his eyes and scent.

“It’s not uncommon with injuries that cut close to the brachial nerves, we can help with that. But first we need to come to accord, you and I. Are you lone because you were driven out of your pack?” She paused to let Bucky respond.

Bucky looked to Steve who thankfully understood.

“I found James when we were boys. He’s never had anyone but me.”

The woman seemed surprised but nodded and continued, “Do you swear not to harm a member our pack or enter pack lands without permission?”

“How is he supposed to know where your lands are?” Steve interrupted before Bucky could respond.

The woman bared her teeth slightly, which made Bucky bare his.

“He would smell them, it would be impossible for him to even approach our owned lands before smelling them. Now, do you agree?”

Bucky nodded his head.

“Good, this will be the last time we approach your owned land without permission as well. If it’s true you’ve never had a pack,” Bucky felt a spike of indignation at that because he’d always Steve, always, “then you can learn from us. Just because you are lone does not mean we will leave you without the history of your kind. Also we can help you shift, if it’s something you want.”

Bucky inclined his head again.

“I will bring an elder, meet me at the northern edge of your property in three days at this time, we will help you shift and then we will discuss things properly. If you want to bring him,” She nodded at Steve, “You may but he must stay outside of earshot.”

With a final nod, the three wolves turned and left.

Bucky could feel his heart pounding and stomach churning. Someone who could help him turn, someone who could tell him a part of where he came from. 

The thing was, he wasn’t sure if he wanted Steve there.

The last time he’d been human around Steve, he’d been sent to kill him. As a wolf, he didn’t struggle with the trauma of seventy years of torture and brainwashing in the same way he would when he was human. He could feel the turmoil practically waiting for him on the other side of the shift. That turmoil, reuniting with Steve, and doing all of that in front of strangers and his Stevie. 

It wasn’t something he could handle. But it’d be hard to convince Steve to stay home.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve feels things and Bucky doesn't get the irony in being unwilling to leave the closet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be re-posting edited chapters soon. I found two lovely Betas who I will introduce to you just as so I as post the edited stuff. Anyways here's this.
> 
> :)

Steve’s feelings weren’t hurt. He would always respect Bucky’s boundaries and they did not hurt his feelings, or at least he tried not to let them.

It wasn’t like Bucky didn’t need Steve now that he’d found other wolves. It wasn’t like Steve and Bucky needed to need each other to continue to be Steve and Bucky.

It was just Steve had never considered himself to be a jealous man.

Really he was overjoyed that Bucky had the chance to learn about his wolf side, that there was a culture and people for him to connect with outside of Steve. Bucky had always been slow to make friends, preferring to keep Steve between himself and most of his other relationships, so it wasn’t like Steve wasn’t over the moon that perhaps there were people for Bucky outside of himself. 

The recovery books that Sam had recommended and that Natasha had just snuck onto his bookshelves with a note that said ‘don’t make this weird’ had stressed a good support system, something that Steve had created for himself but was at a loss as to how to create for Bucky.

So Steve was excited and hopeful for Bucky, that they offered to teach Bucky about his culture, that they offered to help him. They could be someone for Bucky outside of Steve because as much as he was wrapped up in Bucky and wanted to be the one that Bucky could always turn to, even he could admit that he couldn’t be Bucky’s entire world.

Back in Brooklyn Bucky’d been standoffish and slow to open up to people for all his surface charm but he’d had a small circle of friends, and Steve wanted that for him again. 

He only ever wanted good things for Bucky.

Which is why he felt so guilty about the small twinge of jealousy and hurt that he’d been feeling. It was unnecessary and hardly reflective of how Steve wanted to feel, but he couldn’t stop himself.

It had been two weeks since the other wolves had shown up. Bucky had refused to let Steve go with him to the first meeting, and sure, Steve could have snuck after him when Bucky left but he was determined to respect Bucky’s boundaries. 

It must have worked, they must have helped him shift because while Steve was in the habit of leaving the front door open for Bucky so he could come and go as he pleased, he’d spent the whole day within eyesight of the front door so he could see when he came home. He had become increasingly concerned as the hours wore on and after five hours, he’d rushed upstairs to retrieve his shield and found Bucky, in wolf form, hiding in their closet.

When he’d tried to ask Bucky questions, Bucky had pushed against the sliding closet door, closing it in Steve’s face, so Steve had dropped it. But it didn’t escape him that the only ways into the house that weren’t in Steve’s line of sight, the windows or the back doors, were only accessible if Bucky was in human form. 

It also hadn’t escaped Steve’s notice that his laptop was being moved, one of his notebooks had disappeared, emails from the lawyer on the private server were being opened and read before he could get to them, and his books would not always be where he left them. Bucky’d even fed himself from the raw meat in the fridge. He’d yet to see Bucky in his human form but there were suddenly signs that he could and he had shifted. He just wasn’t shifting around Steve. 

He wasn’t spending time with Steve very much at all.

Which was fine and Steve was trying not to let himself feel hurt, because boundaries.

Bucky seemed to spend a lot of time in the closet in their room, although sometimes when Steve was outside cursing at his attempts at gardening (because wasn’t that what people did when they moved to the country?), Bucky would sit on the porch and watch him. He’d sometimes let Steve come and sit next to him, but mostly he would run off if Steve got close. He went into town with Steve and he still slid into bed when Steve did and settled down next to him, so that was something. But Steve spent that week very lonely and bored, which did not help with not fixating on his negative feelings.

The next week Bucky had disappeared in the morning and Steve had to assume he was visiting with the wolves again. Steve sat on the porch and waited for him but it wasn’t until dinnertime that Bucky had come out the woods. He’d come and lain next to Steve, resting his head on Steve’s knee and it had soothed some of the hurt feelings but not the guilt. Bucky stayed near Steve the whole evening.

The next morning Steve had woken up to a face full of fur and a Bucky molded to Steve’s front. He pressed himself to Steve’s legs even while he was walking, causing Steve to almost trip while getting their pre-run breakfast together. He then followed Steve so closely while they were running that Steve was honestly concerned both about tripping and breaking his neck because of Bucky’s behavior. 

At his worst Bucky was overbearing and slightly possessive, but he was not clingy, not like this. Not unless he was worried about Steve, usually at the expense of himself.

After his run Steve sat down in the grass in the yard and when Bucky pressed close Steve hugged him tightly. 

“You know I love you Buck, I’m with you til the end of the line. Remember that.” Steve paused to let that sink in, before continuing, “What I want most in the whole world is for you to be happy and for you to be with me. If I have that, then I’m happy.”

There was the ever present threat of the government breathing down their necks and ensuring that Bucky would be safe from what he was forced to do, there was the wolves, Hydra was still out there, and there were still threats that required the Avengers. There were so many worries and burdens on Steve’s shoulders that it felt like sometimes he’d break right in two, days when he didn’t know if he could bear the weight of it all until the day was over and he had, even if he’d been ground a little further into the ground. Days when he saw all the ways he’d failed and would fail and knew everyone he loved would come crashing down under the weight of that failure. 

But for now, for now he was where he was supposed to be and for now the only worry he had was Bucky and that was a weight he could easily bear, a weight that was never a burden, no matter what else happened.

-

“Sometimes,” Bucky’s words were slurred slightly from laying on his front, his face mashed against Steve’s chest, “I’m afraid that I’ll wake up one day and find you’ve left me behind.”

Steve scoffed, they were curled up in the little cot in Steve’s officer quarters, Steve spooned in behind Bucky, both their heads resting on Steve’s arm. It reminded him of the orphanage, sleeping pressed together on a bad mattress. It was absurd to Steve that he’d leave Bucky behind, Steve had crossed thirty miles behind enemy lines, just on the off chance he could bring Bucky’s dead body home. He was so wrapped up in Bucky that he didn’t fight him when Bucky claimed that no torture had happened and that he didn’t need to be sent home. He reasoned with himself that Bucky’d be better with Steve than waking up from nightmares alone in New York. It was selfish, probably the most selfish thing Steve had ever done, but he wanted to be with Bucky more than anything in the whole world. Wanted it badly enough that he wouldn’t fight Bucky when he wanted to stay with Steve despite everything that had happened.

“Buck you gotta know I’d never leave you behind, and besides where am I gonna go that you can’t follow?”

“Steve,” Bucky paused and grunted as he turned over to face Steve, “I used to feel like I’d pulled off the biggest con in the world. Cause no one seemed to see what you were and I had managed to get you all to myself. But now, Steve, sure first they see the big body and how your oversized nose now fits your oversized face, but it stops them. They take a look and before you know it they see you, they stop to look and they see what I’ve been seeing since you got yourself beat with sticks just to save some dumb pup.”

“Some dumb pup indeed, I follow him all the way to Europe and he’s still worried I’m gonna change my mind.”

“It’s--Stevie, you’re so---you’re just so much of everything that’s good in this world, and now the whole world can see, what use to you have for a poor bastard from Brooklyn?”

Steve grabbed Bucky by chin and curled the arm underneath them, pulling Bucky’s body flush with his own. He was still getting used to the way he could push and pull Bucky in the same way that Bucky had always pushed and pulled at him.

“You listen to me James Barnes, the day I need you to be useful for me to keep you around is the day I hope you leave, cause you deserved more than someone to have a use for you. I never needed you cause you were useful, ya dummy, I need you because you’re you. We made each other a promise Buck, and we’ll reach the end of the line before I leave you behind.”

Steve leaned into the small space between them and brushed his lips to Bucky’s, before leaning back to look him in the eye.

“Jesus, next time Denier and Jones complain to each other about your dramatic speeches, I’m gonna be tempted to tell them about the dramatic stuff I hear while sharing a bed with you.”

“You’re one to talk Barnes,” Steve pinched his side and grinned when Bucky wriggled against him in response, “as if I’d ever leave you behind. Wait they complain?”

“Learn a little more French Stevie, they’re always grumbling to each other about something.” 

“Maybe you should teach me some more?”

Bucky grabbed Steve around the shoulders and pushed him over onto his back, Steve grinned wolfishly and wedged his thigh up in between Bucky’s legs.   
“Sure doll, I’ll teach you French.”

They didn’t ever do more than kiss in the field but right now they weren’t in the field, and there was much better things to do than talking.

-

Steve had not seen Bucky all day, which was not a surprise. Bucky seemed to swing between clingy and disappearing into the closet or out to the woods of late. It was lunch time and Steve hadn’t seen Bucky since they’d returned from their run. If he was in the woods then Steve would let him be but if he was in their closet Steve would see if he could coax him out to eat something.

“Buck,” he called as he entered the bedroom, “you in here?”

There was a shuffling from the closet that answered Steve’s question.

“Thought I’d come see if you want some lunch?” He asked, coming to kneel beside the closet door. 

Generally Bucky would come out if the answer was yes, or peek his head out before retreating back into the closet if it was no. Sometimes it would take him a few minutes to come to a decision, so Steve would wait sitting next to the door until he had his answer. 

There was a couple minutes of silent stillness within the closet, during which Steve settled in sitting cross legged in front of the door. 

Then.

“Steve,” whispered in a husky unused voice through the closet door.

Steve acted before he could even think better of it, before his brain could even catch up he was reaching and pushing the sliding door open. He only got an inch open before it was slammed closed again bringing him back to his senses.

“Bucky?! Buck, shit I’m sorry about opening the door. But you’re-- I mean you can--” his voice shuddered to a stop.

How does one say ‘I’ll take you any way I can get you but I’ve missed having you like this for so long’? For so long some irrational part of Steve had been convinced that “Who the hell is Bucky?” would be the last time he heard his sweetheart’s voice.

Until now. Finally. Bucky was human and there was only a flimsy composite wood door between them.

“Stevie, you know you don’t need to apologize, but I’m not ready to be seen yet.”

Bucky’s voice was slightly muffled, but achingly familiar. It was deep and gruff sort of like it had been when he’d roll Steve over in the morning and say some ridiculous line with a sleepy grin because some lovestruck idiot (Steve) had once told him that he sounded charming in the morning.

Steve couldn’t help the tears that sprung to his eyes, he wasn’t a cryer, hadn’t cried since the second night that he come out of the ice with nothing and no one. But now not only was Bucky alive and safe, but he was talking to him again, and that was about the sweetest feeling that Steve had ever felt.

“It’s okay,” Steve paused to clear his throat, “it’s okay Buck, you take as long as you need. I’ve--I’ve missed your voice.”

“I’ve missed you, it’s been so good being here with you after-- after everything, but I’ve missed you Stevie-doll and I’ve missed you and I being you and I. I wish I could hold you, only got the one arm now but--”

“One’s all you need Buck.”

“You’re stealin’ my lines.”

“Like you ever had lines, Bucky Barnes.” 

It just slips out, their familiar banter, and for second Steve thinks that he’s overstepped, this conversation between them was too fragile for the way they used to bite at each other with their words and with their teeth. But just for a second because Bucky responded without hesitation.

“ I had lines enough to get you didn’t I?”

“Yea, you got me, all the way until the end.” Steve couldn’t help himself he was feeling sappy.

There’s a pause on the other side of the closet door, and there’s a bit too much time and composite wood between them for Steve to know what the pause is for until he sees the tips of Bucky’s fingers sliding through the small gap at the bottom of the door.

Steve ached inside to touch even this small part of Bucky, but he wasn’t about to make the same mistake he had with the door.

“Bucky, can I--”

“Of course you can Stevie.” Bucky interrupted, sliding his fingers through a little bit more.

Steve felt almost absurd how overwhelming it was to press his fingertips onto Bucky’s. He’d been sleeping in the same bed with the man since he was five years old, had spent more time naked with Bucky than he’d probably spent alone, had had these very fingertips in some very compromising places, and yet it felt like one to the most intensely emotional experiences of his life to touch his skin to Bucky’s skin after so long.

If he hadn’t been sitting down, it would have driven him to his knees. 

When Bucky had first come home with him in New York, Steve had nearly collapsed on the sofa the first time Bucky had let him run his fingers through his fur. 

He had been so starving for Bucky, had spent so long without him. Now it was the same, he wanted to hold the body that his body loved the most, even if all he had of it was Bucky’s fingertips.

He heard Bucky pull in a harsh breath and then curled his fingers away from Steve’s.

“Everything is so much harder like this.” Bucky gasped out, “I can’t leave this small space where it’s safe, everything is so terrifying and it makes me so angry. I don’t want the first time you see me again to be feeling anger and fear.”

“Bucky if you never want to leave the our bedroom closet you don’t have to. Can I--is there anything I can do to help.”

“You’re already helping Steve, every day here I feel safer. I’m just not the man I was before.”

“You don’t have to be him. I’ll love you all the same.”

“Jesus Rogers, you sap, I love you too.”

Steve could keep in the quiet gasp. It’d been four and seventy years since he’d heard those word from Bucky. He felt such a conflicting range of emotions, desperately sad and angry that those years had been stolen from them, but overcome with joy that Bucky was here with him, that Bucky loved him still. 

“Sweetheart,” Bucky gently said after Steve had been silent awhile, “go downstairs and fix up lunch, I’ll be down in a while. I want the lamb shanks.”

“Okay, yeah okay, but Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think that we could make talk through the closet door a regular thing? You’re my best friend Bucky, I miss talking with you more than I miss anything else.”

“We can try, but not all the time that I’m in here, I need it to be quiet and dark sometimes, I need to be alone sometimes.”

“Yeah anything you want Bucky, anything at all.”

Steve stood up and went downstairs. He still felt the confusing, conflicting rush of emotions. 

It would only occur to him later that he could never ever let Natasha and Clint know that Bucky refused to come out of a closet. They would never live down the jokes.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I smell sex and candy, yeah, oh and torture and resurfacing memories of decades of torture, but also sex and candy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for mentioned CSA and torture for this chapter. The CSA is just referenced and does not actually happen.

If Bucky had to say which form he had a preference for, he'd have to say he preferred being a man. Most, if not all, of his formative memories happened as a man, plus Steve was much more amenable to him sniffing around that way.

But at least the wolf had priorities. Priorities and instincts that made shutting down the memories seventy years he'd spent as a Hydra murder puppet easier. 

There was a lot but also not nearly enough to fill seventy years. The time he'd spent out of cryo was chopped up into fragments that made it hard to gage any sort of timeframe. But he knew just from what he could remember that it had been long periods in ice scattered with a month defrosted here or there. 

He'd been more of an experiment than anything else. After all, no matter how well you've scraped him clean, you don't trust your enemy farther than the end of his chain.

It was mostly killings just to see if he would or could do it, experiments solely because he was robust enough to endure them, and unsuccessful attempts to replicate him with someone more inherently loyal.

Ever since he first shifted to the wolf, after the helicarriers, the memories have trickled and dripped back into him until he was sure he'd remembered everything there was to remember.

But once again, the wolf has priorities, first keeping the pack safe, second keeping himself safe, and third keeping the pack content. 

The wolf didn't need to actively dwell on the time he was sliced open and told to remove his own liver just to see if it could be replaced or regrown.

It didn't accomplish anything and actively worked against goals number two and three.

The man however, cannot always keep his mind off of the way the wet heat of his own guts clung to his fingers as he dug around inside himself. 

-

Bucky knew it hurt Steve’s feelings that he hadn’t let him go with him to meet with Olivia and the other wolves, but he had his reasons.

It wasn’t even about his history or wolf culture or whatever reason Olivia had demanded that Steve not hear what she had to say. Bucky would end of up telling Steve whatever she said because he didn’t keep secrets from Steve, especially not secrets that mattered.

He was worried. Ultimately he was the same person whether he was the man or the wolf, but the wolf was much more driven by instincts than the man. The wolf didn’t worry about fears and threats that weren’t immediate and did not get caught up in the ugly memories that were in his head. When he was the wolf did what needed to be done, functioned because he must, and felt content in ignore the shambles of his past. 

Just because he was currently the wolf did not mean that Bucky was not self aware, he was a mess and when he shifted he would have to deal with that mess.

So he had gone to meet Olivia and her healer alone. The healer had ended up being Olivia’s wife, a dark haired older woman named Rebecca. Olivia had also brought along a man named Jonah who she said was a pack elder.

Where Olivia was imposing even when friendly, Rebecca was kind with a charming smile and dancing grey eyes. She seemed to Bucky to be someone who was at once friendly and familiar, just one of those faces he supposed, she put him instantly at ease like few people did even before he’d taken long drop from a train. 

It was a good quality for a doctor, or healer. She had explained that she was a trained medical doctor, it was pack tradition for doctor’s to called healers and that she had been practicing for nearly fifty years.

That had come as a bit of a shock, she looked maybe all of sixty, but he supposed there would be time enough for questions when he had the proper voice box to ask questions.

After respectfully asking if she could begin, Rebecca had run her hands over his shoulder, feeling beneath his fur, touching his skin. He hadn’t liked that much, not a lot of people had touched his fur and even less his skin in this form but he tolerated it. It was easier because she had one of the most trustworthy scents he’d ever smelled outside of Steve. After feeling him, she began probing and pressing with her fingers where his pit would be if he’d still had an arm, until she seemed to find what she’d been looking for. He could feel her pull his fur back to look at what she’d found.

Keeping her fingers in place she’d pulled back slightly to look Bucky in the eye. 

“This will probably not feel pleasant, but it’s necessary. Please hold as still as you can.”

He’d nodded because what was a little more pain after nearly a century of it.

Then she’d dug her fingers into the spot she’d pressed on before, she pressed them in deeply until Bucky’s whole body lit up in pain and suddenly he felt the shift coming on.

For a second he sat there, naked and panting and surrounded by strangers.

The things he’d been mentally and emotionally avoiding came rushing back with a vengeance. He could feel the weight of their eyes and suddenly it felt too harsh and exposed in a way that had nothing to do with his naked body. He shifted back and ran, ran for home and for his small, safe, dark closet that smelled like Steve and like himself.

When he reached the house he didn’t even pause before he shifted and let himself in through the back door. He shifted back and silently made his way upstairs where he panted in the dark until his heart stopped pounding and his mind stopped racing. 

-

He knows he’s a good man.

Despite all he’s done, he knows he is a good man. He knows because he remembers.

Each tiny rebellion, every life he spared, every small order he disobeyed. Each time he forced them to force him down, each time he forced them to drag him to the chair. The fact that they could empty him out completely and he still knew that they were the enemy. Every memory he regains of all the ways he fought the until his dying breath tells him that he was a good man. 

He remembers being used as an experimental teacher for group of small hard eyes girls. He remembers trying to subtly give them self-worth, he remembers trying to secretly comfort them, he remembers the smallest of them, a tiny little redhead who had cried when he’d hugged her in the corner where the cameras couldn’t see.

He’d had nothing and no one for so long so he loved each of those little children, but he’d loved that little redheaded girl especially. He’d even thought of her as daughter once, then wondered where that thought had come from. 

It was the longest he’d been out of cryo, and it had felt like with every passing day there was something just on the tip of his tongue, something he had to remember. The little girl didn’t help, so small and fierce, she reminded him of something that he could not remember like the feeling deja vu except all the the time. 

Increasingly he felt the urge to gather up the little girls and run, to herd them to the exits and blow the place behind him.

It had come to a head when his handlers had been talking about his progress. 

“He’s getting attached, they both are.” 

“Little Natalia is getting extra lessons.” The other man said slyly.

“He’s not supposed to be showing favorites, or preferences at all. This is why this will not work, we need to wipe him sooner than later. We have other skilled fighters to train the spiderlings.”

“What’s the harm, he may be a weapon but he is also a man. Let him continue to teach the spiderlings because they are learning much from him and if he wants to get attached to one of them, well it’s not like they’re good girls who need their virginity. He’ll just be teaching her another weapon to be used.”

Something was growing hot and furious in his chest. Before he was aware of moving he was grabbing the man who had spoken those awful things about Natalia, about a little child, and snapping his neck. He grabbed his handler with the metal hand and broke his jaw before he could say the cut off words. 

To say such things so carelessly, to imply that he would do something like that to those little girls who had no one to love or protect them, it made him see red. Men were pouring into the room and he was tearing them to pieces until one of them spoke a word and he went black.

The Red Room never gave him something to protect ever again.

He knew he was a good man, because even empty and in a place as evil as that, he still knew.

He knew who Natalia had become, and he remembered every time he’d shot or shot at the Widow, but even if he’d put a bullet in her, he still felt pride that while he could, he had protected her.

-

For a while Bucky can’t be around Steve, he’s so consumed with his guilt, so overwhelmed by the memories that even as a wolf he stays in his safe and defensible closet.

It’s hurting Steve’s feelings, he can tell even if the big blond martyr tries to pretend like it doesn’t. He and Steve both have the tendency to mother-hen and neglect themselves which is one of the many reasons they work so well together, but Steve tends to internalize it when Bucky isn’t doing so hot.

He wants to tell Steve it’s not his fault but he can barely leave his small sanctuary. He spends the week writing three notes, one full of questions for if he ever sees the wolves again, one full of all the things he longs to say to Steve, and the last one is for himself it’s full what is true and what is false and it helps.

For his note for Olivia he explains that he was stolen and that he found Steve, he explains how he’s never met another wolf since and that he’d like to know what he needs to know. The one week from the day that Rebecca had helped him shift, he takes the note in his mouth and sneaks out early to the edge of their property. He wedges the note beneath a rock and then hides at waits. 

Olivia and Rebecca emerge from the woods not long after and after nodding in his direction they take the note and leave. In the evening they come back and leave him a ten page answer about wolves and their culture. He pours over it again and again and writes down every new question that the answers inspire.

He does not give Steve his note.

He adds to his own note.

Finally he cannot stand to be away from Steve for any longer, and spends several glorious days pressed as close to him as he can. 

In the note Olivia and Jonah explained that pack is more than just wolves thrown together out of necessity. There is also compatibility, both genetic and personality wise. For Bucky to have adopted Steve as his pack had nothing to do with desperate loneliness and everything to do with him smelling their compatibility. He has been truly lucky to find Steve, something he’s always known.

When wolves have no pack, even if they are surrounded by humans, it can be hard with the loneliness that a hypersocial pack creature is not meant to experience, without a pack a wolf can be tormented until they become maladaptive and aggressive.

Which certainly explains Bucky’s tenure with Hydra. 

Steve is his pack, Steve has been saving Bucky since the moment they met. 

They were both lucky to have found each other, two small kindred spirits who luckily were ‘compatible’ in every way.

Being close to Steve helps, in a different way than being alone in their closet helps. Being close to Steve though is infinitely preferable after so long of being alone. 

-

He know’s he’s a bad man.

It’s not that Hydra took him and broke him. He knows that he is stronger than most but not inhumanly invincible. Anyone would break in Hydra’s captivity, especially when they had him as long as they had him. Bucky is painfully aware of his own fragile humanity, he does not blame himself for breaking under torture.

But that does not mean that he is not left with every memory of peering down the scope, standing over the corpse, feeling the bones crack, seeing the bullet hit the body. He has done all of those things and even if he was a weapon wielded by other people it was still his hands, his mind, and his skill that made the kill.

He was more experimental than valued as an asset to Hydra, they pointed him in the targets that were unimportant or amusing for him to kill. If Steve had not gone onto the ice than he no doubt would have been sent after him earlier that 2014. In a way this was a repreve, his death count could have been much higher than it was, but also this means that each name on his list cuts harder.

Innocents and a handful of friends. 

He knows he’s bad because could have, should have, died rather than kill them, but none of his small rebellions ever did a thing to save their lives.

In the end they all died by his hands no matter who gave the order.

-

It was a slow Tuesday afternoon, as most of their afternoons were.

Steve provided the logistics review for a woman named Maria and the Widow, and spent more time than was healthy pouring over Bucky’s case but mostly they just bummed around. It was an odd and novel experience that Bucky wasn’t sure he enjoyed.

He can’t remember a time either of them had ever had not been working. It itches if he thinks about the idleness for too long.

Steve had bought a variety of artisanal caramels and licorice candies and had them shipped all the way from Oregon. They were half whispering as Steve pushed the candy a single piece at a time through the small gap under the door. The mood felt even more syrupy sweet than the candies, and Bucky was for once feeling settled and content in his human skin.

“You remember that time in school when you kept sneaking licorice during class and you got caught when you grinned at Sister Constance and your teeth were black as coal?” 

Bucky huffed a laugh.

“I remember she always used to tell you that you had too strong of morals to be dragged down by the likes of me.” He said, after pausing to lick the salty black licorice off his teeth.

“She should have shared notes with Father Milligan, he was always saying that I was so small and sick all the time as divine punishment for my wickedness. I’m not sure what wickedness a seven year old boy could get up to but he was sure I was getting up to it and that it would rub off onto healthy boys such as yourself.”

“He did not!” Bucky couldn’t stop the outrage that flowed through him. 

He remembered little Steve at that age, small and so fierce, he wished he could go back and protect the little boy from the cruel words.

There was crinkling from outside of the closet and he could hear Steve’s lips smacking as he sucked on chewy chocolate caramels that he’d bought for himself.

“He did,” Steve said around a mouthful of candy, “miserable old bastard that he was. Even the sisters hated him, I overheard Sister Grace mocking the way he used to draw out the words he wanted to emphasis.”

“‘Jaaaaaaamesssss Barrrrrrrrnnnnessss, doooon’t yoooooouu sayyyyyyyy yoooooou have noooooothing to cooooonfessss oooooone moooooore tiiiiiiiime.’”

“Did you really say that? That you had nothing to confess?”

“Well yes, most weeks I didn’t do anything that I felt like I should be particularly sorry about. Most weeks I spent my time running after you and I still feel like that the lord’s work.”

“How did you never tell me this? Is that why you got stuck on laundry duty in the summer so much?”

“Probably. They always thought that because we were orphans we should feel so damn guilty about everything. Milligan hated me cause I didn’t. Was tempted to tell him all the temptations of the flesh I was feeling but I was afraid they’d move me to a different room if I confessed to abusing myself to thought of you.”

“Oh my god, can you imagine?” Steve laughed, then shoved some more candies under the door.

He was losing the nervous and apprehensive quality to his scent. Bucky could tell that Steve was relaxing by the way that he was eating three or four candies at a time and talking around the giant glob of sugar in his mouth, and the way that when Steve was truly relaxed he stopped being gentle and careful and revert to the clumsy oaf that Bucky knew and loved. He felt overwhelmingly fond of his fella as Steve pushed the wrapped candies under the door.

“I don’t want to imagine Milligan in any context involving my dick, the man had a face like hatchet.”

Steve snickered. 

Bucky unwrapped the wax paper with his using his hand and his teeth then ate what smelled like a caramel. The complex sweet burnt sugar and honey caramel blended with the coarse, almost bitter tasting, salt in such a perfect way that Bucky groaned as his chewed the sticky candy.

There was a sudden conspicuous silence from outside the closet and then he heard Steve’s throat click a if he was trying to quickly swallow a large glob of candy and failing.

A second later he smelt it. 

His stomach swooped as he smelled Steve’s arousal, the rich complex pheromone scent that had been getting him going since Steve had started puberty. 

Bucky grinned to himself, then deliberately groaned again.

“You enjoying the candy Buck?” Steve’s voice was low but breathless.

“You know I am darlin’, but I think I smell something even sweeter, you been holdin’ out on me Stevie-doll?”

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice was the cross between a plea and sigh.

“I’m not ready to come out yet Stevie, but can I tell you all the things I’m gonna do to you once I do?”

“Oh christ yes,” Steve gasped.

He listened as Steve stripped out of clothing, he couldn’t tell what Steve took off but Bucky was picturing him naked, and all of his pink and golden skin.

“You know I’m naked in here right Stevie? Ain’t got a stitch of clothing on, and I’d tear yours off with my teeth. I’d push you down and I’d crawl right on top of you and you’d let me because it’s been so long, hasn’t it Stevie-doll?”

“Too fuckin’ long sweetheart,” Steve’s was getting rough and dirty the way it did when he got himself worked up and turned on, “I’d pull you down and kiss you, I would kiss you everywhere I can reach.”

Bucky’s fella is so sweet.

Bucky is torn because he wants to push his hand through the cracked opening, but also he wants to give some friction to his aching cock. His cock wins because well he hears Steve spit on what he assumes is his hand, and good lord Bucky is so turned on.

“Course you would, and I’d let us kiss until our lips are nice and bruised and I’ve rubbed your whole face raw with stubble. We’ll start off kissing long enough to make up for all the time we’ve spent apart. By the time we’re done you’ll be so over sensitive and just begging me to give you a hand.”

“Yeah,” Steve’s breath was shaky like just Bucky talking about kissing is enough to have him right on the edge, “yeah, or maybe the whole time we’re kissing I’ll be grinding against you, maybe I’ve cum so many times just from grinding up against you that I can barely even think straight, maybe you’re making me feel so fucking good sweetheart that I can’t even remember the words to beg.”

“Shit Stevie yeah, you’d just be whining and wriggling underneath me, so overstimulated you don’t even know what you want.”

“You touchin’ yourself right now Buck? You getting off to the idea of getting me off?”

“You know I am doll, you know you feelin’ good is what does it for me. Jesus darlin’ you get me so hot, I love you so much.”

Bucky hears the familiar punch out of breath and deep groan that Steve makes as he comes and that’s does it. He whites out as he cums, comes back to himself still slightly panting. 

Steve on the other side of the door smelling sexed up and satisfied and just a little lonely. He always did like snuggling in the afterglow the best. 

Bucky wiped his hand off on his chest as best he could then pushed the door open just enough to slip his hand through, Steve immediately grabbed it with both of his own. Steve lay there next to the closet door with Bucky’s hand clasped against his chest for a long time, long enough that Bucky started getting a cramp in his bicep. It was worth it though, because he was holding Steve and he’d endure a lot more for a lot less with his fella, his Steve.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post orgasm blues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emotionally this chapter is all over the place and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm probably gonna edit this more but I feel like I've been working on it forever and just wanted to get it out.
> 
> You'll notice that there is an end in sight, three more chapters after this and then I'll be done.

Steve lay there, clutching Bucky’s hand and felt like he was going to have some ridiculous emotional outburst, like he was going to giggle and maybe cry at the same time.

He felt sweaty and sticky, and his mouth tasted stale from the candies and, just, god, he felt amazing. 

Mostly he felt relaxed in a way that he couldn’t remember ever being. He and Bucky were financially secure, relatively safe, and not beholden to anyone accidentally stumbling across their secret and ripping them apart. Bucky was alive and healing, Bucky still wanted Steve. The best part though was the thought that this was only so far, each day promised to get even better.

The thought of a happy and peaceful life made Steve feel lightheaded. 

It was something he’d never really considered for himself but wanted desperately for Bucky. He’d known at a young age that he would die young, that he’d gotten to spend what time he had with Bucky was such a consolation. Still there were days when he felt like he couldn’t get out of bed, like he was grieving the life he could have lived, not for his sake but for Bucky’s. How devastated Bucky would be when Steve died.

Steve was sure if it was some form of irony that it had been Bucky that he had been killed first, and just when Steve was allowing himself to believe that they’d have a long and happy life together. 

Now he had to keep reminding himself not to flinch. Because again, they seemed like they were through the worst of it, the end was in sight and their happily ever after was in sight. They could live in the country seeing if it was possible for super soldiers to get old and fat, and maybe when things calmed down they could spend some time in the city.

(It wasn’t that Steve hated the country, because he didn’t, he just didn’t...love it. Not like he loved Brooklyn. But Bucky seemed to love it and that was enough for Steve to concede that he would be living most of the rest of his life at least part time in the country.)

But while his wildest dreams seemed to keep trying to run away from him, making him feel like a teenage girl writing Mr. Steven Barnes in the corners of his arithmetic book, he felt a part of himself grow more and more tense. The part of him that remembered being an orphan in the boys home. The part that remembered growing up seeing how boys like him were treated at the docks and elsewhere. The part of him that never allowed Bucky to drape his arm around his shoulders for long. Who always kept in mind that for every Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. Mccafferty living quietly and happily in a ramshackle boarding house, there was Ronan Campbell who limped home in the mornings until one morning he didn’t come home at all or Adelaide Judge who had lived across the hall for a time before the police came by request of her parents and put Rosie into a sanitarium up state. The part of Steve that was convinced he was going to die young, that part never forgot the life lessons learned. 

It was the part the reminded him that he could be rich and holding Bucky’s hand after their first intimate moment in seventy years but still know that boys, men, like Steve did not get happy endings.

Steve had forgotten that only once in his life and that period had ended with seventy years of torture for his best friend. 

This time Steve would not relax, when the world tried to rip Bucky away from him again he would fight it until he’d ripped everything good or bad apart, he would only give up if and when he had Bucky’s corpse in his hands and if it ever came to it he would find something more permanent than crashing a plane into a glacier.

“I can’t actually read minds but I can always smell when I don’t like where your mind is heading.” Bucky cut into his thoughts with a soft and sleepy voice.

“Sorry. You know how I can get dramatic sometimes.” Steve send, attempting to pull away from the dark turn his thoughts had taken.

“Sure,” Bucky huffed, “we’ll pretend it’s only sometimes. It...it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Steve fought the urge to tease, because he could hear the insecurity in Bucky’s voice. Something completely unexpected. He pulled Bucky’s hand up to his mouth to press a wet kiss on his knuckles.

“This feels like the most restful and happy moment in my life, and I was think of my overwhelming fear that I will somehow lose this when I’ve only just found it again.”

“Steve…”

“James Barnes, it was not only not bad, it was good, best sex we ever had.”

“Steven Rogers you are a liar and sappy enough to give me cavities, but I’ll take the compliment all the same.”

“I show you cavities.” Steve muttered in response and put an unwrapped candy in Bucky’s hand.

Bucky laughed while he ate it and Steve tried very hard to let himself get lost in the sweetness of it and the caramel taste on his lips. 

-

The next few weeks were so sweet they made Steve dizzy.

Steve loved spending time with Bucky, he loved it when Bucky was the wolf, but he loved it more when they talked through the closet door. 

He loved hearing the rough timber Bucky’s voice smoothing out as he grew more used to speaking after being unable to for so long. He’d always been Bucky’s friend first above all else and being able to speak to his best friend and have his best friend speak back, well, it eased his soul.

He’d yet to see Bucky but they spoke every day, spent all day with Steve outside the closet or outside an open window while Steve worked on his poor tortured garden. Bucky did sometimes stay as the wolf so he could snuggle up to Steve but they both preferred to be able to have conversations even if Bucky couldn’t bring himself to be seen.

Bucky told him about how he was writing questions for the other wolves and leaving it for them, and they’d spend two hours every week going down Bucky’s list of questions and answering them, teaching him lore that most wolves learn as pups. 

Steve found himself significant less jealous now that Bucky was talking to him, but still had to tramp down the urge in him to demand some way for him to be a part of it. He knew it wasn’t healthy to demand that he be a part of everything in Bucky’s life so he acknowledged that he felt that way and then ignored it. 

He knew that urge was coming from his insecurities anyways. Steve Rogers, not Captain America but Steve Rogers, had only ever really been significantly important to one person and Steve had never had to learn how deal with competition. Not that the wolves were his competition, just that they had the potential to be. 

But it was okay, he could handle it, because he could tell Bucky and Bucky had taken his hand through the crack in the door and gently kissed Steve’s knuckles and called him Bucky’s big dumb blonde and that had somehow felt like the nicest thing anyone had said to Steve in ages.

Bucky told Steve some of what he was feeling, some of what he remembered, and most of what he wanted. They had long back and forths about the lawyer. 

It was so good, and then it got better.

One night Steve startled awake because he was being pulled into a solid chest, he froze sure that he’d spook Bucky or something and then he would move and Steve would get to enjoy being nestled up to Bucky’s armpit. The smell of masculine sweat and the illusion of being small brought Steve back to their little room in the boarding house.

“Shut up and go to sleep Steve.” Bucky mumbled, breaking the tension that had Steve frozen.

He relaxed into Bucky.

“Didn’t say nothin’ jerk.” 

“Didn’t have to punk.”

Buck was still there in the morning when Steve woke up, but shifted back into the wolf soon after. He’d explained to Steve how it was hard for him to feel safe while human, that he was such a wreck some days that even when he shifted, he’d immediately shift back to the wolf because the human form was vulnerable and it was hard to control his animal instincts. 

He’d explained this like it was something he needed to apologize for, voice sounding ashamed even while muffled by the composite wood door of the closet. Steve had told him in that conversation that he just wanted Bucky to feel safe no matter what form he needed to take for that.

Now he just grabbed Bucky and held him in a tight hug, whispering that he loved him, that Steve was so lucky to have him, that he was the best thing to ever happen to him.

He never wanted it to be ambiguous, no matter what form Bucky took, how Steve felt about him.

-

It was no secret in the orphanage about how much Steve like Bucky.

Steve liked Bucky, a lot. He like him as his best friend, he liked him as his fella (okay, so that was a secret but only barely), and he especially liked how much Bucky liked him back.

They were in bed and Bucky was blanketing Steve’s whole body, grinding down on him while they made time. They had started trading kisses lazily but Bucky had gotten himself real worked up and now was humping against Steve and making amazing hungry sounds that went straight to Steve’s gut, while his kisses were turning wet and sloppy.

Steve liked the wet slide of Bucky’s mouth.

They had only been at this for about six months and it had been the best six months of Steve’s life. The only thing better than living with your best friend is living with him and getting to kiss him too. 

Steve always tried not to look too smug when the other boys traded stories about how far a girl let them go, coping a feel or a shy kiss on the cheek. They’d tease Steve for being unable to attract the girls but they didn’t know that the person that got Steve the hottest would crawl on top of him every night and that Steve had gotten far more than a grope behind the building at the St. Anne’s boy and girls social.

He was unsure if Bucky and he were still virgins as so far they’d been content with using their hands and grinding up against each other, both of which were very satisfying in their own right but Steve had been asking the right questions in the right places and had gotten some ideas on how to take things further. One of these nights he was gonna get Bucky real worked up and then was gonna get Bucky inside of him. 

He had asked one the goodtime boys down at the docks if he had to be the one to take it cause he was smaller and they’d laughed at him and told him to stop listening to dirty rumors and that anyone could take it so long as they liked it. Which honestly relieved Steve because he wanted to take it but he didn’t want to just do it because he had to. 

He’d brought it up to Bucky earlier, the idea of them going further, the idea of using their mouths and other parts of their bodies and just talking about it had gotten Bucky so worked up that he’d started pulling at Steve’s clothes before the conversation even began. Not that Steve minded, especially not when Bucky got to the point where his kisses were too sloppy and he softly grunted as he worked himself against Steve’s hip. 

Steve pressed back but didn’t make any real effort to get off, he enjoyed the feeling of Bucky coming on him and he didn’t mind waiting his turn. Once Bucky had gotten off and was no longer distracted he did truly devastating things to Steve’s body.

Bucky came all over Steve’s torso, panting and pressing sloppy open mouth kisses to the side of Steve’s neck. He collapse to the side, always needlessly coddling Steve. It chafed a bit sometimes having to be taken care of, but he’s come to terms with it for the most part, at least from Bucky.

“Give me a second,” Bucky said, voice still breathy, tucking his face back into Steve’s neck.

Steve reached up and smoothed Bucky’s hair back, it was unstyled but Steve thought it looked dashing like this. It made Bucky look wild and dangerous when it fell forward and hid his eyes. Steve was sure he would love Bucky all the same no matter what but it certainly didn’t hurt that he was so handsome. Unlike the other boys their age, the soft youthfulness was already fading away on Bucky, leaving him with a stubbled hard jaw and solid muscles that made him look like a man already grown. 

It drove Steve wild sometimes looking at Bucky. 

Steve was still stroking Bucky’s hair and thinking about how good he was gonna look when he got his clothes off and his hands onto Steve, when a firm knock had them jolting in terror. 

The door didn’t lock so if they took too long answering it whoever was on the other side, one of the sisters no doubt, would come in and see them. See Steve half naked with cum on his chest and Bucky looking fucked out.

They both jerked up but Bucky hissed and pushed Steve back down then pulled blankets over him. 

Steve watched from beneath the blanket as Bucky buttoned up his shirt and pants and then rushed to the door. He made himself big, spreading his arms and planting his feet wide to make it harder for the sister to see into the room, but Steve could see Sister Rose peeking over Bucky’s shoulder.

“James,” She started and then paused, “James Barnes! You sinful boy! Do you have a girl in there?!”

She grabbed Bucky by the ear and entered the room. She made eye contact with Steve and he could see the moment that she understood the scene before her, Steve covered up in Bucky’s bed and Bucky looking debauched. Whatever angry thing she was going to say next was swallowed with a sigh.

“Well I’m not going to say that I’m surprised, I was more surprised when I thought it was some poor lass you’d snuck up here.” She frowned but it wasn’t a condemning sort of frown, more fond, Steve didn’t know you could frown fondly, “You both will come see me before breakfast in my classroom, and in the future boys prop the desk chair under the door, it’ll keep it shut until you move it. You’ll get into trouble for it but far less trouble than this will get you.”

Both Steve and Bucky gaped at her, but she just gave an exasperated shake of her head and left with one more reminder to be at her classroom before breakfast.

After she shut the door, Bucky propped the chair up and then turned to Steve.

“Do you still want to…?” he raised his eyebrows to imply the end of that question.

The shock had kind of ruined the mood but Steve was a fifteen year old boy so that question was all it took to get him going again. 

Nerves kept them both up half the night, squirming and elbowing each other accidentally so they both were tired and anxious when the time came to get up earlier than normal so they could bath before going to see Sister Rose. 

Steve worried that her calm demeanor was a trick and she was going to have the Priest or maybe even the Bishop there. Not that the Bishop would care about the small sins of two orphans like Steve and Bucky but maybe he’d be there to throw them out onto the street.

But when they arrived at the classroom, it was just Sister Rose.

They shut the door behind them and sat in the two chairs position in front of her desk. 

“James, Steven, you can both stop looking so scared, I’m not here to give you some horrendous punishment. The church says that in situations like these I’m to encourage you towards chastity and a life in service of the church,” she gave them a wry grin, “but I’ll be honest I doubt very much either one of you is suited to be a priest.”

“No Ma’am” Steve answered, because it was the truth.

“I’m about to say something very radical and I’m going to ask that you keep it to yourselfs. But I don’t care what church doctrine says on this matter, I don’t believe what you boys do with each other is a sin, or that the nature of your bond is inherently sinful. I know it may be hard to believe it because the world is very cruel to people like us but it’s the truth and I want you to believe it.”

Steve felt surprised and bit shocked when he heard the us. He’d never thought about girls loving other girls, he very rarely thought about girls at all for the most part. But if there were boys and men who preferred men then it stood to reason. Suddenly Sister Rose’s reaction was less confusing. Steve snuck a peek at Bucky to try and see what he thought but he was focused on Sister Rose.

“You’re both very young, I was your age when I met a girl who I was sure was the love of my life, we were not careful as we could have been and her family forced her to marry and when I was twenty I heard that she’d killed herself. I made a very impulsive decision to join the church and live a life of chastity and piety, it was not the right decision but ultimately one that I learned to live with. I only say this because I want you two to be careful but also to know that if what you have right now doesn’t last forever, that doesn’t mean that you won’t find something that does. The world wants you to believe that you live a doomed and unsatisfying life because of your proclivities but that’s not true at all. God loves all of his children no matter what.”

“Sister, all due respect but I will love Steve until the day I die.” Bucky protested, making Steve insides feel like hot porridge on a cold day.

“Okay James, but promise me you boys will be more careful. Not all the Sisters are even half as accepting as I am.” 

“We promise Sister.” Steve said quickly, because he could already see Bucky clenching his jaw and if people thought Steve was the most stubborn bastard in Brooklyn, that was only because they hadn’t seen Bucky when he’d worked himself up into a state.

Steve saw no reason to fight with Sister Rose, he wouldn’t do anything rash if he lost Bucky because he wouldn’t be losing Bucky. He knew she thought they were only teenagers and what did they know, but if there was one thing Steve could bet on, it was that James Barnes was his for life.

-

They really hadn’t intended to lay around making time, it was just one of those things that just happened. 

They were watching some movie from Steve’s list and he was tucked up under Bucky’s arm, a tighter fit that in the past but one that had Steve near giddy with happiness. Bucky had turned his head and smiled at Steve and Steve had just been so overcome that Bucky was sitting on the couch where Steve could see and touch him that he couldn’t stop himself from pressing a quick kiss to Bucky’s cheek.

It had been chaste and dry but the problem lay in that they had never ever been able to stop at just one kiss. One of them would start and then the other one would respond until they were grinding against each other barely separating their lips enough to breath.

It was so good. So unbelievably good. Sex had never been their entire relationship, hell two weeks ago Steve was prepared to never have it again if that was what Bucky wanted, but it had been an important part since they’d first discovered sticking their hands down each other’s shorts. 

During the war they hadn’t really had the time to fully explore Steve’s new body and after Bucky’s death even masturbation felt like a chore to take off the edge of unwanted physical urges. 

But now, now Bucky had gotten rid of both of their shirts and was running his up and down Steve’s chest, pinching and grabbing, and Steve was holding him locked against his body in a way that he’d never been able to before. Then Bucky had flipped them over, accidentally rolling them off the couch and landing on top of Steve. It had hurt a bit but the pain had faded when compared to the unbelievable hotness of both being pinned down by Bucky and easily supporting the other man’s weight. 

It was suddenly becoming clear why Bucky’d liked to toss Steve around a little. Steve kinda wanted to try that out, to just throw Bucky down somewhere sometime and just crawl on top of him. 

Steve was just starting to lift his hips to ease off his running shorts, living in the country and only seeing Bucky all day was turning him into a bit of a lazy dresser, when suddenly Bucky shot off of him and was across the room and turned into a wolf.

“Wah---” was all Steve was capable of saying before there was a sharp rap at their door.

Natasha didn’t even wait a second before letting herself in, calling into the house as she slammed the door behind her.

“There’s gonna be a drone flyover scanning the house in less that 20 minutes so he needs to get to woods now!” 

She entered the room and looked at Steve, lying on the floor half-naked with tented shorts that were doing nothing to hide anything.

“Gross Steve, your dog was in the room. Barnes! You better either be under something metal or you better run right now!” She lifted her voice and looked towards the hallway with the stairs.

“Um, he uh left the house when you knocked.” Steve managed to say, still confused as to why she was here.

“Good, the CIA is coming for a ‘visit’,” she put air quotes around visit, “they think you have Barnes. I haven’t heard if they have hard evidence or if they’re just going on a hunch but your boy better disappear fast.”

Steve stood up and reached for a shirt but Natasha snatched both off the couch before he could and went and put one in the laundry room and then came back while smearing her lipstick with the collar of other one. Before Steve could ask what she was doing she smeared her lips against his and then against his neck.

Bucky made a strange growling bark sound that Steve had never heard him make before but Natasha was already pulling back.

“What the hell Natasha?” 

“Steve you’ve obviously been having sex, they need to think that it’s me,” She took off her shirt and put it on backwards and fluffed her hair, “trust me.”

“Honestly, why does every urgent encounter with you end with us kiss.”

“Because I know you won’t read too much into it and sex really is one of the best ways to make people uncomfortable enough to move on.”

She pinched her cheeks and was holding her breath when the there was a knock on the door.

Steve went to get it but Natasha shook her head and waited until there was a second knock before pushing Steve to go get it.

At the door was Kate, or Agent Sharon Carter now that she was no longer a S.H.I.E.L.D. plant, flanked by five people all of whom were wearing suits and CIA badges.

“Captain Rogers,” Agent Carter started, before looking slightly embarrassed to see Steve in a compromising situation, “I’m sorry to disturb you but may we come in?”

Despite the embarrassment on their faces, the question did not sound like a question at all, so instead of telling them to fuck off like he’d like to, he stood aside and let them file in. The last agent through the door hesitated as if he was worried what Steve would do at his back, but seemed to decide against letting Captain America know that he was considered untrustworthy by the goddamn CIA. 

They all went down the hall into the living room and Agent Carter was giving weird intense looks at Natasha who was no meeting her eyes and one of the other agents kept glancing at Bucky who was trying and failing to look small in the corner of the room that had a dog bed in it. 

“Captain Rogers,” another Agent started, but Steve wasn’t going to play this game like a spy would.

“He’s not here.”

“Excuse me?” The Agent asked, again, not sounding like much of a question.

“The Winter Soldier, the person you were hoping to catch by showing up unannounced at my farm house, he’s not here.”

“He is an internationally wanted fugitive and hydra operative, Captain I think you of all people---”

“I think you need to be very careful before giving me advice. He’s the longest held prisoner of war and I’ve read his file and there are names from Langley in there.

“The only prisoner of war running around armed to the teeth and killing of his captors.” One of the other Agents muttered and Steve could literally feel his blood pressure rise.

“Forty one,” Steve didn’t need to raise his voice, “forty one senior officials were arrested last year for being hydra operatives. Between all of them and lower level analysts, handlers, and field operatives there is an estimated 70,000 compromised cases. 70,000 cases where the information might be wrong, where the objective might have been hydras, where interests that the CIA claims to serve might have been for the bad guys all along. So maybe instead of focusing on me and making sure my house is clean of a so called hydra operative you should start by making sure your own house is clean first. Because just going by the statistics alone all of you here in this room and taken and carried hydra order whether you know it or not.”

“Captain Rogers,” Agent Carter started, and Steve was getting real fucking sick of the way they said his name.

“Get out of my house, he’s not here, your drones will tell you that so get the fuck out.”

After they had left, Natasha turned to him with a wry smile.

“So that could have gone better.”

At some point Bucky had managed to leave the room without Steve noticing. Steve wanted to find him, wanted to recapture the lazy lust that they’d had on the couch just a half hour ago, maybe soak in the tub together, but he needed to call their lawyer.

It was time to put an end to this.

Also he needed to wash off Natasha's lipstick that was all over his face.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now be honest, who saw this coming?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the long break, can we just establish that fall and winter are just not my seasons. illness and grad school stuff. I did publish three challenges/gifts if you want to read those. This was supposed to be longer but it was giving me fits for like months and also I wanted to give Bucky a gift for his birthday. So here we are.
> 
> I'm [vilesbian](http://www.vilesbian.tumblr.com) on tumblr

Bucky fled the house, fled Steve placing himself between Bucky and the United States government just like he’d feared Steve would. He ran on instinct and found himself at the corner of the property where he met with Olivia and Rebecca.

 

He was surprised to find Rebecca there alone, she hadn’t sensed his approach, because for all her enhanced sense he was downwind and instinctively moved silently.

 

She sat kneeling on the ground where they normally gathered, her head bowed and her scent melancholy and introspective.

 

He observed her for awhile, before deliberately making noise so she’d know he was there. She was old, Olivia had told him that they were both almost a century old, contemporaries of Steve and himself, but both Rebecca and Olivia did not look their age. Rebecca had silver hair, a few strands of brown still visible. Her face was striking despite the wrinkles and age marks , or perhaps because of it, with warm grey eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a strong chin with a dimple in it. 

 

“Hello James,” She gave him a watery smile, “I just came out here to be alone for awhile.”

 

Bucky shifted, showing he’d be willing to leave but she shook her head.

 

“You can stay if you’d like, I don’t mind.”

 

They sat there in silence. There’d always been something about Rebecca that was especially comforting, Bucky wasn’t able to pinpoint what it was, but figured that after so many years as a healer, she just gave off an aura.

 

“Olivia told you that wolfpacks don’t normally take on lone wolves, but ours does more than most,” Rebecca said, breaking the silence, “I was actually lone. I was very young, it was for a short time and a very long time ago, so it wasn’t as big of risk for the pack, but still. I was barely a teenager and my entire pack had been killed, my whole family. I thought I was alone in the world, and so I ran and ran until I came across the pack leader before Olivia. I thought that he would kill me for trespassing but instead he took be back to the center of pack lands, and helped me feel safe. Eventually I met Olivia and we both just knew it was meant to be.

 

She paused for a while, giving Bucky a strange searching look, before continuing.

 

“I put my memories of my first pack, of my lost family away for a long time, so long I’d almost forgotten. I was afraid of letting it consume me, I had a future and just wanted to focus on that. It’s strange how the past comes back when you least expect it to, isn’t it?”

 

Bucky felt like she was going to say more, but before she could they both heard Steve whistle, as well as his steps drawing closer. Steve’s way of letting Bucky know he was trying to find him without shouting Bucky’s name or some insulting call for a dog.

 

Rebecca’s mouth crooked in a wry smile.

 

“You’re being called, and I must be getting back.” A slight pause, “I come out here sometimes, if you’d like to visit outside of your lessons with Olivia.” 

 

Then she was heading back to her pack, and Bucky turned to go back to his. 

 

When he found Steve, the man dropped to his knees to hug Bucky, but Bucky refused to let him until he’d licked every trace of Natasha off of him. He knew why the woman had done what she’d done, and he appreciated that there was no attraction between the two, but he didn’t like the scent of someone else on his Steve. 

 

-

 

Steve said he was going to contact the lawyer, Jillian Sperling, as soon as they got to the house and that Bucky should stay as a wolf because Natasha was still there.

 

She looked up from her phone when they came in.

 

“You said you had plans Rogers? Because if the CIA is comfortable enough to illegally raid your property in New York state, that doesn’t bode well for your buddy.”

 

Steve ignored her as he dialed a number on his phone and waited as it rang.

 

“Hello, this is Steve Rogers, I need to speak to Ms. Sperling please. Thank you.” 

 

Natasha went back to tapping at her phone and Bucky retreated to his corner in the living room. This was what he wanted to avoid. Steve dragging himself into the mess and permanently attaching his name to Bucky’s in the minds of powerful unscrupulous people.

 

People who wanted Bucky for the Winter Soldier, people who’d jump at the chance to cut Steve down to his component parts to learn the secrets of the serum. Hydra was not the only evil out there, and there was a reason they hid so well within the US government. 

 

As Steve spoke with Sperling, and they planned how they would proceed, how they would basically blackmail the US government, Bucky considered contingency plans.

 

If it had been only a few months ago, he might of considered leaving, hiding from Steve and his friends for a few years. Yes it would’ve hurt Steve, and it would’ve hurt Bucky, but if they could come out the other side free and alive he’d have done it. But not now, because first it wouldn’t change anything, the wheels were already in motion.

 

But also he’d been in Steve’s arms, slept in his bed again after so long, kissed him and tasted him, and Bucky was weak. After getting their full relationship back, it wasn’t something he could give up again.

 

Still he did not like where this was going.

 

He heard Sperling ask Steve if it’d be possible for her to talk to him. Steve paused, and then asked her to hold on. Without a glance at Bucky, Steve went upstairs, Bucky knew this was his way of asking without asking in front of Natasha. If Bucky stayed downstairs, Steve would know that that was a no, but if Bucky wanted to he could follow Steve upstairs and shift.

 

Natasha already knew he was somewhere in the vicinity, even if she didn’t know he currently in the same room. There was minimal risk.

 

With an annoyed huff Bucky got up and followed Steve upstairs. 

 

He shifted when he reached their bedroom and sat naked on the bed, giving Steve an irritated look.

 

“Ms. Sperling, here’s Bucky, or James Barnes.” He handed the phone to Bucky.

 

“Ma’am,” Bucky said, politely, it was not her fault Steve was an idiot who was all too willing to sacrifice himself for Bucky’s sake.

 

“Mr. Barnes,” Sperling said, her voice crisp with with light New York accent, “it’s good to finally talk to you. I don’t know how aware you are of my correspondence with Mr. Rogers on your behalf but I was hoping to speak with you before beginning the proceedings, as I am representing you.”

 

“I’m aware, Steve’s kept me in the loop and I’ve read your emails. I still do not approve of your plan, but since Steve’s idiot plans work out more than they fail I’m willing to go along with it.”

 

“May I ask what your reservations are?”

 

“I have a couple. I’m uncomfortable with Steve attracting the attention of people in the government in a bad way. His fame and position have protected him but I don’t want certain people in the Department of Defense being reminded that he is the only survivor the serum and deciding he’s more useful as an experiment.” 

 

Steve rolled his eyes.

 

“You think this is a possibility?” Sperling asked, taking Bucky seriously.

 

“I think that your whole defense relies on the government keeping its word. They may have cleaned out Hydra Ma’am but if you think that makes the Department of Defense or any number of Defense contractors suddenly ethically clean now, I’ve got a bridge I’d like sell to you.”

 

“You don’t think the government will keep its word on whatever they promise us.”

 

“I know it won’t. I’m a high value asset, and if Steve’s not going to toe the government’s line, than he’s a walking national security breach as far as they’re concerned. Yes they would do a lot to keep my nationality and identity a secret but who’s to say that they can’t just disappear everyone involved. They have the resources, if anything fraction of information contained in the Shield leaks should tell you that.”

 

“If you’re fully in the loop, than you know we have contingency plans and protections against that in the works.”

 

“All due respect to Stark, I’m also leery of trusting someone who wants to privatize national security.”

 

“Yeah well, I also have some opinions on that. But Stark has the power to protect Mr. Rogers and yourself. Not to mention that the United States gains a lot from the Avengers as a global security force. If they want to continue to benefit and not deal the political quagmire of the Avengers and Stark Tech distancing themselves or aligning themselves with a foreign powers, than they give us what we want.”

 

“My fear is that if they see that their special team of weapons can think for themselves and determine their own allegiances for themselves, they’re going to look for weapons that can’t think for themselves and what they might do with those.”

 

“Mr. Barnes, my goal is to stop them from thinking of any of you as weapons.” 

 

“I guess there’s only one way for us to see if that’s possible.”

 

“Will you allow me to work on it?”

 

“Yes. I give you permission or whatever you need to hash out the details with Steve.”

 

Bucky shoved the phone back at Steve and retreated to his closet where it smelled only of himself and Steve and he could turn back into a wolf and lay down on some soft blankets.

 

Natasha stayed the night and discussed strategy with Steve, it was nothing Bucky hadn’t heard before and he was not feeling sociable. Natasha already knew he was there so he made Steve heat up the leftover risotto that they’d had the night before and bring it up to Bucky’s closet because having real food with seasoning was so much better than raw meat, no matter how good the meat tasted as a wolf it could never taste as good as creamy rice cooked with a healthy dose of coriander and chilies. 

 

He wanted to have a long conversation with Steve, to hash out what was coming and to make sure they were on the same page as far as contingency plans went. About what they would do if the CIA or someone else came back and if they didn’t leave when asked. 

 

He also wanted to ask Natasha for passports and untraceable currency. 

 

He waited until Steve had gone to bed before slipping on a pair of sweats and tapping softly on Natasha’s door. He didn’t hear movement but he whispered for her not to open the door, assuming she had heard him and gotten up.

 

After a beat of silence he decided to start.

 

“This may not go the way he wants it to, no matter how airtight the plan is.” He whispered

 

There was silence on the other side of the door.

 

“If it goes bad, I will get him out but it would make things easier if you could get us some of the things that I can’t.”

 

“What is it that you need?” She asked him, her voice lowered to match his own.

 

“Passports, transportation out of the country, and untraceable cash.”

 

“I’m surprised you’d trust me with this, this means I would be able to find you.”

 

“You’re Steve’s team, he trusts you, you were the one he could rely on when he didn’t know who else to trust. That’s good enough for me.”

 

“Give me a few days, I’ll have them in go bags in a getaway vehicle near the meet up with the Department of Defense.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

He was about to walk away when she spoke up again.

 

“I trust you too, you know. At first I was worried that Steve was compromised, but I’ve been digging and I’ve found--things, information that tells me you’ve always been someone I could trust.”

 

It was question, even if it wasn’t framed as a question. For a second Bucky couldn’t speak, he had to gather himself, force the words past the tightness in his throat.

 

“I couldn’t protect any of you as well as I’d have liked. You were all so small, you should have had someone better than me to protect you.”

 

“You did what you could, that tells me what I need to know.”

 

Bucky walked away without responding, back up the stairs to their room, shucked his clothes and wrapped himself around Steve as fast as he could without waking him.

 

-

 

Sperling called back and let them know that the negotiations with the Department of Defense would happen in a week. Stark and Natasha would be there and Bucky would be required to be there as well. 

 

Natasha had left the morning after the CIA raid, saying something about having her own fires to put out. 

 

The day after Natasha left, Bucky took Steve out into the forest. He knew their house wasn’t bugged and they’d be able to hear any drone or car parked close enough to have long range listening equipment. 

 

But he wanted to be safe. 

 

And he didn’t want these plans to be where they lived. It felt like a betrayal to the old farmhouse that had become a home to the both of them.

 

There was something sacrosanct about the small hallways, and old rooms. The way the contented scent of the two of them gathered in the corners of the rooms, already becoming ingrained in the wood and cloth.

 

Making it feel safe. 

 

He remembered their little boarding house room, where he could lie in bed on his day off and just breath in the comforting sweetness of having his pack with him, his love near him. After he left for the war he’d known he’d never feel that safe again. Even after Steve found and rescued him, he’d known that the safety of their little room was not something he’d ever have again. He’d known this.

 

But despite all odds, despite himself even, he found the potential of it in their farmhouse. It wasn’t quite there yet, but he could feel it, in the rustle of their comfortable sheets on the biggest bed Bucky’s ever slept on, it was in his closet, in their kitchen, and their sofa.

 

He doesn’t want open discussions of the worst things that can happen to the two of them to get caught in the folds of softness that were in their home and get trapped there along with all the good feelings. 

 

Still the conversation must happen. He and Steve worked best as a team, and in an emergency when everything went sideways the best place he could be was following Steve.

 

Steve’s best talent has always been thinking on his feet. They could make a plan for right now, but Bucky’s main goal was to tell Steve all the resources available for when---if, for if they have to run. Steve’s quick thinking and ability to take the right risks, and Bucky’s skill, even with just one arm, they would be able to go through anyone who tried to stop them. 

 

-

 

He went to meet Olivia but was surprised again to see only Rebecca waiting for him. He had his notebook full of questions in his mouth because he’s still not ready for anyone who is not Steve to see him in his human form.

 

She smiled nervously when she saw him. 

 

“I was hoping I could talk to you privately this time, could your lessons with Olivia wait? I promise it’s important.”

 

He dropped his notebook and nodded, before cocking his head and waiting for whatever she had to say.

 

“I had---” She broke off and chuckled nervously, “I told you I lost my family a long time ago, um before that happened I had a brother named James.”

 

Bucky felt an electric spark down his spine, a sudden premonition of what Rebecca was trying to say. He had not recovered his memories of his life before Steve, although Steve had told him how he met and the little that Bucky had told him of his life before. Steve had said that he’d always felt that it had been too painful for Bucky to talk about, that the loss was a very deep wound in Bucky’s spirit, to have lost his pack like that. Bucky had never really said, but if anyone would know him well enough to read what was unspoken, it would be Steve.

 

For a second Bucky felt a deep pang of grief for his former self, to have wanted this so very badly only for it to be given to the Bucky of now who didn’t necessarily not want it, but who could not value it the way that he once would have.

 

Rebecca told him of a whole family of Barnes’, her father and mother, of her three younger sisters and one baby brother, of a small pack of extended family members, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, of the men who came and tried to take all of them but only managed to come away with the small brother. How the men who then slaughtered the ones they couldn’t take with guns and fire. She told him about how, many years later, she was vacationing with her wife around the fourth of July and they came across the memorial for the ten year anniversary of Captain America’s death, and there had been a picture of his team, and standing next to Captain America was a man named James Barnes who was the spitting image of her father.

 

Of course James Barnes had died in the war so it had been one of the great what if’s of her life. She’d looked for all the information she could about the man, which wasn’t much because his main claim to fame was that he was Captain America’s best friend. The details that she did have, sparse as they were, matched the possibility, he was an orphan and he was the right age, he looked the part, he was always a could have been, but there was no way to prove it. 

 

When Captain America had come back, she’d considered going to him and asking if he knew if James Barnes was a wolf, if he could have been her brother. But it would be a risk because what if Captain America had no idea about wolves. It wasn’t until he’d bought the property next to her own and moved in with a werewolf that she’d allowed herself to hope that this long unresolved question in her life could finally be answered. 

 

Were they family? 

 

He listened and listened, until it all came out. She was his sister. He had a sister.

 

He didn’t know how to feel about it. He felt like crying for her a bit, because he would never be, could never be what she wanted. She’d spent decades on this question and all he could think about was this could barely have come at a worse time.

 

He was getting better, or healing or whatever, felt less fragmented and lost than he did even months ago. But he still had memories of torture and death, of being a weapon for more years than he was human. He was still so paranoid that he could barely stomach talking to someone who wasn’t Steve through a door in the middle of the night 

 

He wanted to be the person he used to be, to be able to be human enough to shift and to hug her or to tell her about himself. Just like a small part of him wanted to be the man he used to be for Steve. But there was no point in wishing for the impossible. 

 

If Steve could love him as he was now, even when he’d know Bucky for much longer and much better than his long lost sister, then he hoped Rebecca could too. 

 

Which gave Bucky an idea on how to handle this.

 

He stood up and picked up his notebook and then turned towards the house, stopping after a few steps to indicated that he wanted Rebecca to follow him. 

 

When they reached the house, he shouldered through the back door, Steve always left it cracked for him in case he didn’t feel up to shifting. 

 

Steve heard him and called out letting him know he was in the front room.

 

Bucky led Rebecca into the room and sat down next to a surprised looking Steve.

 

“Um Hello,” Steve said standing up, looking from Bucky to Rebecca and back again, “do you-- um what’s going on?”

 

Bucky was trying give Rebecca significant looks so that she’d know what he wanted and it seemed like she did.

 

“Hi, I’m Rebecca Proctor, I believe you’ve met my wife, Olivia.”

 

“Yes, um nice to meet you, I’m Steve.”

 

“I was talking to James, and as I think he doesn’t feel comfortable speaking to me directly he brought me here so you could answer…” She trailed off, obviously meaning the statement as a question.

 

Bucky nodded.

 

“Oh okay, I’ll try my best.” Steve said, motioning for her to have a seat as he sat back down.

 

He smelled apprehensive, he’d confessed to Bucky that the other wolves brought out insecurities but that he was working on it. Bucky had found that a bit adorable, after everything, all their time together, the idea that Steve thought there could be any competition at all was laughable. 

 

Even if there was competition, Bucky would never let Steve go, especially not now that he had him again.

 

“I was asking James if he was James Barnes, your friend from the war?”

 

Steve hesitated, looking unnerved.

 

“It’s just that my maiden name is Rebecca Barnes, and I think I might be his sister. I know it was very long time ago, but wolves age slower.” She paused for Steve to confirm but Steve was just sitting very still with a blank look on his face, “Our pack was attacked in the early twenties and they stole my brother James, he was six at the time. I thought, when, I heard about James Barnes in your unit, that maybe he was my brother.”

 

Steve’s eyes had widened while Rebecca spoke, he glanced at Bucky as if in confirmation when she was finished. Bucky gave Steve a small nudge, to let him know that he could tell her. 

 

“Yes, he’s James Barnes from the war, and yes he wants me to tell you he’s your brother. I met him when he was six, after he escaped from the men he said killed his family. We didn’t know that anyone else had survived.”

 

Rebecca gasped a little, her eyes had been misty while she’d been telling her story to Bucky but now they were started to tear up. She reached to hug Bucky but he moved away trying to look apologetic, he was not comfortable with anyone but Steve touching him. Not now, maybe not ever, sister or no.

 

She looked hurt for a second but Steve opened his arms, also teary eyed the big sap that he was, and she hugged him.

 

Bucky went into the other room and shifted, so they could hear his voice but not see him.

 

“Steve I’m going out and while I’m gone I need you to tell her about me, about what happened. I need her to know but I can’t be here while you tell her.”  He paused, “I am happy that you’re alive Rebecca, I’m happy that we found each other, but--”

 

He shifted after trailing off and left the house.

 

Later he would write her a letter with all of his new and conflicted feelings but right now that was all he could manage.

 

He stayed in the woods, just far enough to be hidden, but close enough to see the house. When she left he came back. Steve was red eyed and damp looking, and was clingy but didn’t bring it up. Bucky knew he wouldn’t until Bucky brought it up first.

 

It was one of the many reasons why he loved Steve so much.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Grad School is a lot, being in a one year long accelerated program where you take 15 grad credits and do your practicum simultaneously is even more. I hopefully plan to finish this story up by the time that fall term starts again but my practicum starts next week and my last batch of summer classes just started so I can't promise much.
> 
> I'm not super pleased with this chapter but after writing certain scenes a thousand times over the past few months I just had to let it go and move on with the story. So here it is. 
> 
> I'm Vilesbian

Steve woke up slowly the morning of the meeting. Bucky’s arm tucked around his chest and holding him tightly. He was warm and safe. He didn’t experience the usual brief confusion or forgetting coming out of sleep. Instead he woke with a quiet conviction that he would not be separated from Bucky no matter what drastic measures he had to take. 

His thoughts had lost their panicked edge they’d had just the day before, the familiar pre-battle calm coming over him. It was a meeting to negotiate for Bucky’s freedom but he was steeling himself for things to go from bad to worse. Things never came easy. 

A sleeping growl rumbled against his back and neck, breaking his grim thoughts. 

“Put the captain away until we need him doll.” Bucky’s scratchy morning voice was still thrilling after so long without it and even with the meeting on the immediate horizon it still affected Steve, making him feel hot and flushed. 

“I won’t lose you Buck, not today, not ever again.”

“And I won’t be lost. But you and that lawyer have told me this is the best course of action and so we will see it through. But that’s for later,” Bucky moved his arm, groping at Steve’s chest, “right now this bed smells like us so enjoy it.”

“You’ve been the one who says we need to start preparing for the worst.” Steve gasped as Bucky’s groping hand moved lower and lower. 

“Doll this is preparing the for the worst, and preparing for the best case scenario. This might be the last time in a while we get to be in a bed and house that smells like us, but if it goes like you think it will then we will come home to sheets that smell even more like us.”

Bucky’s hand reached its destination and groped at Steve’s cock, giving it a few dry tugs before he brought it back up and cupped it over Steve’s mouth. Steve tried to reach to grab the lube, but Bucky grabbed him. 

“No lick it, I want us to smell only like us.”

Steve groaned and licked Bucky’s hand until it was wet enough and then arched as Bucky began to stroke him, grinding back on Bucky’s cock as he did. It reminded him of the war, when Bucky would get anxious and hyper fixated on how Steve smelled, hating any smell that wasn’t Bucky or Steve himself.

Bucky was an expert at working Steve’s body and it didn’t take long before he came, gasping over his hand. Bucky gripped at Steve’s hip and began to work himself against Steve until he too came, spilling on Steve’s back. 

Steve panted, lax from sleep and sex, trying to get the will to leave the bed and take a shower. He knew that if he waited long enough Bucky would get weird with their seed, anxiety made his wolf instincts stronger. Steve loved him, but his fixation on smell was fine until Steve could start smelling himself and then he started itching for a shower. 

He rolled out of bed and Bucky sighed and then followed. They showered and dressed, stayed near each other. Steve cooked them a big breakfast, he had made fresh bread the day before and they had decadent french toast, a handful of eggs each, and a whole package of sausages. After they ate he used the rest of the loaf to make sandwiches and placed them in the fridge. 

They would need to eat before they left, stopping at any point of the trip to New York City would be dangerous, stopping would give anyone an opportunity to attempt to grab Bucky.

The plan was simple. One of the Avengers quinjets would land behind the house, remaining cloaked. They would be flown by Natasha and Clint to the place of the meeting and would land on the roof of the selected building for the mediation. The lawyers were meeting them there. 

Bucky had wanted even more defensive security measures and for the meeting to happen at the Avengers Compound. But was negotiated down in exchange for Sam and Tony being present and armed. 

After breakfast Bucky shifted and stayed close to Steve. He shifted back when it was time to eat but wasn’t talkative. Steve knew that Bucky thought it would go wrong, that this would be the the last time they enjoyed their farmhouse and the quiet slow life they had started to build for themselves. 

That was really what Steve wanted, to be safe and content with Bucky. It felt like a million years since he’d had that. Truthfully if this worked, if Bucky received the justice he deserved, if they were allowed back to the farmhouse, it might be the first time in his life Steve could rest easy. 

Bucky would be safe, Steve would be safe, they could continuing getting to know his sister and her pack.

They just had to get through this week. The first meeting, mediation, paperwork and then whatever came next.

They ate their sandwiches in silence, then Steve grabbed their bags. Just a handful of clothes and necessities, Natasha already had their go bags ready in their plan b vehicle in case they needed to run. 

“Steve,” Bucky said, as he followed Steve back downstairs, his voice hoarse and scratchy betraying his tension, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Steve set the bags down at the bottom of the stairs and turned to wrap himself around Bucky.

“I won’t let anyone get you Buck, I won’t.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of Stevie,” Bucky paused before continuing, his voice hesitant and gruff, “there are words, words programed into me by hydra. They say them and I--I go away---disappear and there’s only the soldier left. I don’t want to be the soldier again. I don’t want to lose myself.”

Steve tightened his arms around Bucky.

“It’s why I don’t turn around anyone but you, why it took me so long turn around you even. I trust you with my life Stevie, I do, but the words don’t work when I’m a wolf. The arm kept me from turning, kept me human so I couldn’t escape. You need to promise me something.”

“I won’t kill you Buck, don’t ask me to do that.”

Bucky pulled back and Steve was forced to loosen his grip so they could look at each other.

“Jesus doll, I won’t put that on you, if I freeze,” Bucky grabbed Steve’s left hand and pressed it to the pit under the stump on his left side, “if you heard someone speaking russian, or shouting words you don’t understand and I freeze, you press me right here, it’ll make me change, they can’t control the wolf.”

“I promise sweetheart, I promise I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Bucky pulled out of Steve’s arms and angled his left side towards Steve, “okay just once do it so you know.” 

“Does it hurt?”

“No, but even if it did it’s better than being used by hydra to hurt you or worse. You won’t kill me, don’t put me face that with you.”

Steve nodded, then reached out and rubbed Bucky’s shoulder, before he trailed his fingers down and pressed where Bucky had put his hand. He jerked back as Bucky shifted. Bucky panted up at him, licking at Steve’s at hand before moving back and shifting again. 

He picked up the bags with and moved to the door, tossing over his shoulder, “No matter what happens punk, I expect you to survive so I can tell you this was a bad idea.”

-

It was not it turned out, a bad idea. 

The lawyers and staffers for the D.O.D were skeptical but Bucky’s lawyers were well prepared and the initial mediation went well. 

Three meetings and they had convinced them that Bucky was innocent, or at least that prosecuting him was more trouble and embarrassment than it was worth. Now it was just more meetings to determine the terms, what would be given to the Department of Defense in exchange for the government leaving them alone. 

They were angling for the Avengers but the thought of being another intelligence agency's strike force made Steve feel sick. He’d rather disband the Avengers forever than become a tool for hidden and harmful agendas again. Not after S.H.I.E.L.D., not after having to face the fact that he had worked for the enemy, and the perversion of everything he had thought he stood for. 

Never again.

Even beyond that Steve did not want to fight anymore, he had been kicking around this idea, that he could maybe stop fighting. Maybe. Retire permanently maybe.

Steve was ruminating on this as they made their way up to the vehicles at the end of the day’s mediation. Bucky was next to him, although not touching, he showed no affection anywhere in the building and Steve took his cues from him. 

They reached the roof and Steve pulled out of his thoughts, pulling into the present for the short walk from the door to the quinjet. 

Later, upon reflection he would realize that there was never anything that the four of them could do, four superheroes, but only four men minimally armed. 

He thought they were going to try to grab Bucky, time slowed and sharpened and he moved to protect the man he loved, so did Sam and the security team. Rushing Bucky forward as Steve moved to hold them off.

But when they got close they struck out with something, catching the edge of Steve’s skin and he felt like he had been lit up. Beyond pain, floating somewhere so bright and painful that he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. 

The last thing he heard was a vicious snarl from Bucky and then---


End file.
